


nail by nail, board by board

by taylorswift



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: 99 percent sure this was inspired by the antics of the clintasherson fam gc, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Angst galore, Childhood Friends, F/M, I couldn't explain this to you properly even if it wasn't 1am, I didn't mean for this to be 30k but here we are, Idk what these tags are either, Jeremy and Scarlett are soulmates thanks for coming to my tedtalk, Slow Burn, They dance around each other irl so they'll be dancing around each other here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-06 06:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18845077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift/pseuds/taylorswift
Summary: He's good at building most things. She's exceptionally good at building walls to keep him out.ORthe au where jeremy and scarlett aren't (entirely) famous, but not much has changed.





	nail by nail, board by board

**Author's Note:**

> i'm _baaaaack._ i told you i'd feed you, did i not? somewhere during endgame premiere week, i guess, i was hit with an onslaught of oneshot ideas that all absolutely demanded to be written, and this was one of them. if you know me, you know i love a good au. in real life, jeremy is fourteen years older than scarlett. in this fic, he's only two years older than her, because hello creative liberties that are important to the plot! also, i was eyeballs deep in this before the whole "engagement" hullabaloo. i remain unbothered. i've done this rodeo before. just another day at the office, if you will. 
> 
> **dedicated to:** my sweet gracie grace, happy early 21st birthday loser! look at me, actually mastering something like timing for once in my life. i hope that you spend your big day doing something other than reading this monstrosity, but i felt the need to give this one to you since you've given me so much in the time i've known you (that, and it's your induction into the insanity that is rennerson). i adore you with my whole ass heart and i will never be able to put into words just how much you and our friendship mean to me. you're a light in this world and a light in my life, and it is one of my greatest joys to fall down every rabbit hole i possibly can with you. let's stay lost forever. mega honorable mentions to nat, amanda, and shelby, who have kept my sanity about me when this fic was just supposed to be 3k. 
> 
> **songs to listen to while you read (to optimize all your tears):** almost famous by noah cyrus, please don't leave quite yet by adam agin, the draw by bastille, is there somewhere by halsey, the beach by the neighbourhood, take what i can get by matthew mayfield, i love you by billie eilish, 11:11 by pia mia, i have questions by camila cabello, exhale by sabrina carpenter, hey you by lea michele, the moment i said it by imogen heap, i'm so tired by lauv and troye sivan, ba ba ra by the national parks, get on the road by tired pony, quit by cashmere cat x ariana grande.
> 
> i'm a whore for feedback and i also like to play the guessing game of "which of my reviewers is jeremy renner?" so please, please please consider stopping by that comment box before you click out and lemme know what you thought! title comes from miranda lambert's 'the house that built me' even though i didn't listen to that song a single time in the entire process of writing this. just the yeehaw in me jumping out, i suppose. you can find me on twitter @emswifts and on instagram @strrlights where i am happy to talk all things fandom with you. please stop by and say hi! happy reading xx

The first time they meet, Jeremy is six and Scarlett is four.

It’s a hazy memory in his brain now; he’s not sure if it actually happened or if it’s all something that over time, he simply constructed because he needed something nice to remember from childhood. The way he remembers it, they had the same babysitter. They lived in the same apartment building with a few floors difference and their babysitter, some high school girl that also lived in the building, would watch a bunch of them after school or on the weekends.

He doesn’t remember her being a spitfire at age four, but he does remember that she always did her best to hang with the boys, abandoning the girls and their pretend makeovers and coloring books to chase after them. The other boys weren’t too keen on embracing her company. He didn’t really mind, though. She was a little bossy, sure, but she was genuinely fascinated with the things he’d build out of Legos. She liked to sit with him and watch as he aimlessly put things together and then hastily ripped them apart, occasionally even joining in on the fun.

“Make me somethin’,” she’d asked him one of those first days that she gravitated towards him. So carefully, he crafted a thin green tower and attempted to make the petals of a flower extending off the edges with all red pieces.

He remembers the way she smiled at him when he decided it was good enough – even if it wasn’t, really – and handed it off to her.

He remembers her hair always being in French braids and tied off with either white or red ribbons. He remembers the two of them sharing peanut butter sandwiches and him finishing the crusts she never ate. Strangely enough, he even remembers teaching her how to spell the word ‘because.’ It’s a miasma of pieces in time that seem as though they all came from oddly similar snapshots in a scrapbook. But that, at the root, is him and Scarlett. Just a supercut of childhood memories that are probably too good to even be true.     

If you were to ask her, she’d say differently. She’d say that she physically can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in her life. He was just always there.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

“Whatcha drawing?”

She’s cracking her  _fucking_  gum again, a habit he knows she’s only picked up because she wants a smoke and can’t have one, and it makes him really regret letting her have the last drag of his cigarettes every time he lights up. He figures he’s got to at least pretend to be somewhat upstanding seeing as how she’s only fourteen, so he refuses to share anything but the dying embers and secondhand smoke. The sound of the gum, however, is beyond obnoxious and almost makes him want to sacrifice his morality in exchange for his sanity.

He tells her this, and she just rolls her eyes.

“Somebody’s gotta be my knight in tinfoil,” she cajoles as she sits down next to him. He’s sitting outside at their usual meetup place – it’s an in-between spot between their both their schools that they’ll rally at after they get out so they can walk home together. It gives Melanie some peace knowing that he’s with her, even if he’d like nothing more than to tell Melanie that Scarlett doesn’t need any sort of watchdog. She’s more than capable of holding her own. “Lemme see.”

“It’s nothing,” he deflects, because it really is nothing. It’s nothing more than an absentminded doodle that looks very reminiscent of the Guns n’ Roses logo, a doodle that is preferable to the stack of trig problems that await him (and will probably stay waiting because fuck trig). “Where’s ‘ya boyfriend at?”

She scoffs. “He’s not my boyfriend.”  _He_  is reference towards the kid that’s walked with Scarlett to this point on and off for the last two weeks; name’s something like Josh or Jeff or Jack. He doesn’t really care.

The boyfriend, however,  _very_  much cares that she’s walking to meet up with Jeremy. He always does a shitty job of hiding his disdain whenever he lays eyes on him. Jeremy thinks that’s why he’s been walking her here, even if he does just turn around and backtrack the way he came to presumably go home: he’s ridiculously jealous. He’d love nothing more than to tell this character that they’re both in middle school and Scarlett will be done with him before they even make it to next month, but he keeps his mouth shut because for some reason, he makes her laugh. Let her have her happiness. Who’s he to interfere?

A hand suddenly curls around the top of his notebook and jerks it towards her lap. “Now cut the shit and show me.”

“Jesus, woman,” he grumbles as he relinquishes control and lets her see. No use in stopping her now.

Her eyes flit over it at the speed of light, looking back up at him once she’s finished her analysis. “Renner,” she says, all level and no-nonsense. “This is good.”

“Johansson,” he mimics, snatching his notebook back from her. “It’s nothing.”

She has a ridiculous look on her face when his sights shift up, all wicked grin and glittering eyes and racing mind. “I want you to design something for me one of these days.” She leans back against the bench as she rips out the hairband that’s keeping her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Like, when I’m famous and have enough money to buy whatever the hell I want, I’m gonna call up my dear friend Jeremy and have him design all my clothes.”

He snorts. “I am not designing clothes. That’s fuckin’ ridiculous.”

“Okay, well, you can…design me a tattoo. Or a car. Or a house. Something like that. Would ‘ya?”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he acquiesces, mostly just to get her off the conversation. Scarlett’s got dreams and aspirations bigger than the borough of Manhattan. She’s been applying to all of these acting schools in New York, hellbent and ready to hell-raise if necessary. Scarlett’s the type of person who will make whatever she wants to happen  _happen_. He’s privy to the moments where she talks big and crazy, of course, and she does her damnedest to drag him down the rabbit hole alongside her. Being the showboat is her thing. He’s content to just walk alongside her, let her daydream as wild as she wants to. He supposes it’s nice, though, that she thinks of them as some kind of package deal.

He finishes shoving the notebook back into his bookbag that is overflowing with loose-leaf papers, one of them likely that trig homework he’s never going to lay eyes on again, and stands up. “Now c’mon. I’m feeling particularly nice if you want a hot chocolate or somethin.’”

When she stands up, she loops her arm through his and hugs it, leaning into him as they start to walk. “Know what I’d love? I’d  _love_  for you to get your lighter out.” She’s batting her eyelashes, cranking up the coquettishness to get her way. Unfortunately for her, he’s perhaps the one person on the entire island that’s immune to her shit.   

She’d argue that she could sway even him if she tried hard enough. He doesn’t ever want to test that theory because he knows she’d probably be right.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Scarlett sends him letters when he goes off to college. His mom is ready to get the hell out of dodge and finds a job out in California – she’d never ask him to follow her, of course, wants him to spread his wings and live his life – but he’s a momma’s boy through and through and he doesn’t like the idea of not being in the same timezone as her. So he applies to Modesto Junior College and registers for computer science and criminology classes among the gen ed credits he is sure that he’ll abhor.

He doesn’t like the idea of not being in the same timezone as Scarlett either, since they’ve never really known what it’s like to be this far apart from each other. Sure, they never ran in the same circles and had more opposite than in common, but he’s pretty sure she’s the closest thing he’s got to a best friend. He dragged her to a double feature of Jurassic Park when her parents were in the process of getting divorced and it was like a battleground at her house. She slept over on the night he went to prom and came back so drunk he could barely get up the back stairwell, much less take care of himself. They weren’t necessarily there for every moment of the other’s life but they were there in all the moments that counted, and there are about to be a lot of moments that count that they’re both going to miss.

But she reassures him that he’s making the right decision for him and promises that they’ll figure it out somehow. She’ll steal Vanessa’s phone and call him on the nights he doesn’t have class and she’ll write him letters in her downtime during the tech rehearsals for shows. Whoever makes enough money first will fly out to the other. They’ll be okay. She’ll be okay and he’ll be okay and if anything, this whole thing will only make them stronger.

She calls him every other Tuesday night – Vanessa’s a fucking tyrant when it comes to that phone of hers – and sometimes on the weekends when he’s not out with his new friends or she’s not busy with a show. She tells him these insane stories about the guy who does all of her piercings and the dude’s stalker ex-wife (she’s gotten at least four more new ones since he’s left, he knows she uses it as a coping mechanism), he admits that he absolutely hates computer science because it’s got nothing to do with taking shit apart and putting it back together again. He’s good with his hands but the people in computer science want his brain, and that shit’s just not there.

When she calls, she’ll ask if he got her letters or inform him that more are on their way. He looks forward to the letters, mostly because she won’t just send one at a time. She’ll send them in bulk, the envelope threatening to bust open at the seams when it makes it to his mailbox. He’ll read them when he’s got time between classes or in the classes he especially hates and he hears her voice in his head when he reads, just like she’s saying all of it to him. It’s like getting her day-to-day a week later.

One day after class, the only decent guy in his computer science intro class, Sam, snatches the especially long letter Scarlett’s sent right from his hands. “Who’s this from?” he asks, the fire of the devil flashing in his eyes. Jeremy tries to grab it but Sam’s quicker, skirting out of his reach as he glances over the note to find a name. “Scarlett, huh? Who’s  _Scarlett?”_

“Girl back in New York,” Jeremy answers roughly, trying to make another move for the letter. Sam lights up like the tree in Rockefeller Center at Christmas as he draws his arm back.

“Aw, Renner, that’s fuckin’ adorable. Got yourself some jailbait—”

“—don’t fuckin’ talk about her like that—”

“—back home writing you goddamn love letters while you’re getting the finest education Modesto can offer.”  

“They’re not love letters, dickhead,” he bites. “She’s like my sister.”

One of Sam’s eyebrows arches in contempt. “Sister? Dude, my sister barely says more than five words to me over the course of the week, and they’re usually, ‘ _Get out of the bathroom.’_ This?” He waves the papers around in his hand. “This is some chick flick shit.”

“And you’d know all about the chick flicks, wouldn’t ‘ya, Rockwell?” Jeremy takes full advantage of the defenses he’s made Sam lower and all but rips the letter out of his hand. “There’s nothing there,” he explains, because Sam still looks wildly skeptic. “She’s always got herself a boyfriend and I pretty much fucked my way through high school. We never saw each other like that.”

“We, or you?” Sam questions. “No one writes letters that fuckin’ long to someone they’re just friends with. Maybe she’s one of those actors, is real good at fooling you into thinkin’ she doesn’t have feelings because she knows you’ll run. You’re older, you’ve got her on the ropes,  _clearly_ , she’s writing you letters so you won’t forget about her – maybe she’s one of the kinky types, gets off on the whole heartbreak thing—"

“I told you,  _don’t_  fuckin’ talk about her like that.” This time, it’s not a threat, it’s a warning. Not only does he not want to hear Sam talk about her like she’s some notch waiting to be etched in the bedpost, he doesn’t want to entertain thoughts like that. It’s a road he’s forced himself to block off ever since they entered the golden age of adolescence. He doesn’t dare let himself think of her in the same context as he does other girls because he knows the second he goes there, he’s never going to be able to turn back. She’s  _got_  to be different because if she isn’t, he’s going to lose his best friend and his mind in one fell swoop. She’s too important to him for him to do some dumb shit like fall in love with her when he knows that’d be the death of their friendship. So he keeps his eyes straight ahead while the wall gets built high enough that he can’t see over it.

And then there’s morons like Sam who invite him to scale it.

Sam takes the hint and backs off, hands raised in mock arrest. “All I’m sayin’ is, if I had a girl three thousand miles away willing to write me novels every week about trivial shit, I’d be hopping my ass on a plane.”

He bites back the  _you’ve got no idea_  that bubbles up in his mouth. Instead, he just settles for, “Sadly for you, ‘ya don’t. You’re just stuck doing mine  _and_  your DOS homework.”     

**❖ ❖ ❖**

The first time Jeremy goes back to New York City is for Scarlett’s high school graduation.

The last few years of their lives have been anything but a cakewalk. California’s changed him. College nearly killed him, her fancy performing high school was not all smiles and musical numbers, he was busy praying he wasn’t about to get somebody pregnant and she was dealing with a bunch of sexist assholes. The letters were a thing of the past and they stuck mostly to phone calls that went one of two ways: they either caught each other at the wrong time or they’d stay on the line for close to five hours and try to catch the other up on three months of life.

By some stroke of crazy luck that he absolutely doesn’t believe in, he manages to come up with enough money to fly himself out to Manhattan right around the same time as her graduation and figures now’s as good a time as ever to surprise her. He mentions it to Melanie and she’s over the moon with the idea, and somehow her whole family (save for her) manages to get in on what is now being referred to as Scarlett’s big graduation present.

Which is really just him.

But they swear she’ll be over the moon.

He’s about to leap out of his skin the whole day it takes to travel to New York, his flight landing at LaGuardia early in the evening. Melanie assures him that that’s alright, because she’s going out to dinner with a few of her fellow almost-graduates and this way, they won’t have to come up with some extensive lie as to why half the family’s headed to Queens. He stops in a little convenience shop inside the airport before heading to the pick-up and buys her every pack of Sour Patch Kids that they’ve got on the shelves just for the hell of it.

Melanie, Hunter and Vanessa all come to pick him up – Melanie because obvious reasons, Vanessa because Melanie’s directionally challenged even though she’d deny that going down into her grave, and Hunter because they’ve got the whole twin telepathy thing going on and he’d spoil the surprise by accident, plus, he doesn’t have anything else better to do. Jeremy doesn’t remember Melanie Sloan being strong enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs, but the hug she wrestles him into is enough to put him halfway down the bridge to unconsciousness. “She’s gonna be so happy to see you,” she promises. He sure hopes so.

They get back and smuggle Jeremy into her bedroom before she gets home from dinner. It feels a little invasive, just sitting in her room without her there and waiting. It’s like being inside of her brain without her knowing. There are pictures all over her chest of drawers of her and people he doesn’t know from Adam’s house cat (and some of him, which warrant a smile), an ash tray on her nightstand, scripts thrown on her bed that are left open in the place she stopped at. A lot has changed since the last time he was in this room but it’s still entirely her. It’s reassurance that even if things have changed, there’s still a little piece of them that has remained untouched and untarnished by time.

There are suddenly noises out in the hallway, which grabs his attention. She must be home.

“Hunter, what the hell, why are you following me like a lost puppy?” He hears her from the hallway and just the sound of her voice puts the most ludicrous grin on his face. “Why the hell are  _all_ of you following me? What’s even in here?”

“We told you, it’s your graduation present.” Someone of the female variety – it’s either Melanie or Vanessa, he can’t distinguish – answers her.

When Scarlett speaks again, she sounds even closer, like she’s right outside the door. “And I need an audience watching me when I open it?”

Hunter answers her plaintively. “Well, yeah.”

“You guys have officially lo—” The word dies in the back of her throat as she opens the door and turns around only to be met with the sight of Jeremy Renner sitting on the edge of her bed. Shock hits her square in the face and she stumbles backwards a little, white-knuckling the doorknob. Hunter is standing right behind her to absorb her fall, hands resting on her shoulders to steady her.

“Surprise,” he sings, feeling like he’s going to break in half at how quickly the joy rushes through him and stretches him out. This is the first time he’s seen her since he left for California and sure, he knew that they’d be slightly different people, but  _fuck_  he was not expecting the sight of her to make his heart trip over itself. Her hair’s blonder, cut to where it brushes along her collarbone and she’s figured out how to finally tame it and style it so it’s truly straight. She’s traded in her jeans for a little black dress and a pair of heels and she looks grown up, more grown up than he’s ever seen her. This doesn’t look like his Scarlett. It looks like a version of her he’d conjure up in some wildest dream of his.

“Oh…my god,” she stammers out, completely at a loss for words. Hunter pushes her forwards into her room and if it weren’t for her grip on the door, she’d go falling forwards. Behind her, her entire family’s lurking in the hall to witness the reaction. “Oh my  _god.”_

“You gonna stand there gawking at me all night?”

All the words have apparently been wiped from her brain, because she screeches, “Oh my god!” yet again. This time, she’s regained some control over the muscles in her face and an obscenely wide grin has broken out across her lips.

In his chest, Jeremy’s heart stutters.

She runs at him and he meets her halfway, the two of them colliding like planets that have fallen out of orbit. He catches her and her arms are tight around his neck, the skirt of her dress swishing against his jeans when he picks her up and holds her close to him. She’s trembling in his arms and where she’s buried her face in the crook of his neck, he swears she’s crying. They breathe each other in for a moment to the tune of her family laughing and the gentle hum of ‘aww’ as the moments tick by where they don’t break rank. It’s just him and her standing in the middle of her room clutching to each other as if they’re the only lifeline they’ve got, the only thread tethering them to reality.    

Finally, she pulls back, the motion his cue to set her back on the ground. “When did you even get here?” she asks once she’s back in front of him and swiping underneath her suspiciously wet under-eyes.

“Two hours ago, maybe?” He shrugs. Time’s never been his strong suit, mostly because it’s always been a load of semantic bullshit. “We did the whole smuggling me here thing while you were out at dinner. Didn’t wanna miss the chance to surprise you.”

Scarlett turns around to look at her family, all of whom are crowding her doorway as they spectate. “God,” she groans with a laugh. “I thought you guys had lost it, following me like Mama Duck.”

“We didn’t wanna miss the look on your face,” Hunter replies.

“Which now that we’ve seen, we’ll, uh, give you two some time to catch up and everything,” Vanessa continues, grabbing Hunter by the collar of his shirt and tugging him back across the threshold into the hallway.

And with that, they’re left alone.  

He sits down on the edge of her bed while she kicks her heels off near the door, body leaning up against the door to make sure it’s closed all the way. “I don’t even know what to say to you first,” she admits. “Mostly because I’m having a hard time accepting that you’re real.”

Jeremy holds both arms out wide. “I’m as real as I’m ever gonna get, hot sauce.”

She stops to stare, green eyes absorbing the image of him. “You are actually sitting in my room right now.” When she says it, it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of this fact.

“Oh what, you dream me here sometimes?” He laughs when he says it, meant to poke fun at her in all her speechlessness glory – she’s  _never_  speechless – but the darkness that falls over her face suggests that it’s not much of a joke at all.

“Yeah,” she answers, dropping down onto the bed next to him. “When it got bad, I would. I’d just…picture you sitting over at my desk while you scribbled away in that notebook of yours. Waiting until I’d stopped my bitching and moaning to turn around and give me that Renner-patented ‘ _stop your moping, sweetheart, it’ll all be alright’_  look of yours.”

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been that. “Raffi,” he mutters, pulling the old childhood nickname she only lets him and her family still call her straight from the arsenal and it’s like someone’s stuck a popsicle out in the July heat the way she melts into him. She snuggles up into his side, her arms looped around his waist and his chin resting on top of her head as he lets her slightly squeeze all the life out of him. He’s needed this too.

“I missed you.” She mumbles the words into his shirt, a fact that he’s known but feels strangely comforted by having her reaffirm it.

“Missed you more.” He would bank every penny he’s got left in his checking account on that.

He takes both of them down, backs hitting the mattress, and they lay like that for a while: her curled up into his side with a grip on his shirt so tight that the wrinkles will have to be steamed out later, him with one arm around her and the other behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling. It feels like someone’s gone and painted over their exteriors, maybe sanded their edges a little, but they’re still the same puzzle pieces that have always fit together. He breathes easier than he has in months. “How long are you staying for?” she asks quietly.

“I fly back next Wednesday.” That gives them roughly a week and a half together – he’ll get to watch her walk across a stage and get her diploma, they’ll have time to explore and catch up and get comfortable in an old routine right before he’s got to get on another plane. “Oh! Brought you some Sour Patch Kids from the airport,” he adds as the thought pops back in his brain.

She stirs in his arms, pulling herself up off the mattress to give him a bewildered look. “And you’re just now telling me about them?” Her hand smacks down on his exposed bicep to nudge him along. “Stop wasting my time, get those suckers.”   

He laughs the entire time he rummages through his backpack for the candy in question.  _No, not a whole lot has changed after all_ , he thinks to himself.

They spend the next week of their lives throwing Sour Patch Kids into one another’s mouths, crafting haphazard blanket forts at three in the morning to sit under and talk about their lives, helping each other run lines and write lyrics, sweltering in the sun as it reflects off the asphalt and soaks into their skin, laughing and crying and holding hands and dreading the moment that they have to let go so he can ship back out to California on time. When they drop him back off at the airport, Scarlett cries and they promise that the gap between now and their next visit won’t be as long. He makes a point to turn around to wave at her one last time before he heads for security. The sight of her, small and waving sheepishly at him as the blonde hair falls in her face, twists a tight knot in his stomach.

He doesn’t know it, but that’s also the last time he sets foot in New York City.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

He’s good with his hands. That’s perhaps the one truth in life that he’s sure of. He’s good at letting music notes flow through his fingers and out in the keys of a piano or the strings of a guitar. (He’s good at hitting a drum, too, but that’s mostly anger management.) He’s good at picking up a pen and sketching something, whether it’s a flower or the profile of someone sitting across the café. He’s good at painting, he’s good at measuring lines so they’re absolutely straight before he draws them, he’s good at picking things up and cutting them in half, he’s good at lining them up and hammering them into place. Some would say that he’s simply got an eye for detail, but he’d argue. He sees the bigger picture in his mind first, all of the intricacies weaving together absentmindedly as he builds his vision to match that of what is in his head.

Fresh out of college, Jeremy’s doing absolutely nothing with his life, and especially nothing that makes use of his two-year degree. He’s doing odd jobs here and there in order to pay rent – and rent is often the ceiling, there are nights when he uses candlelight to make sure he’s not walking into a wall – and while he can appreciate the beauty of simplicity, this cannot be a permanent thing. He’s got to do something, find something. Part of his brain suggests that he go enroll at the police academy, pretend the criminology degree is truly a path he wants to follow and make it so he hasn’t wasted all that education for utter shit. Another part says he should rally the boys, start that Journey cover band – or an actual band – and spend their days half-drunk while they sing. Another part tells him that the answer isn’t yet in front of him and he’s going to have to do some soul-searching before it lands in his lap like all the good things do. Patience, it urges him. But he’s not patient. Not by a long shot.

He just knows that he’s good with his hands and  _that’s_ what he needs to be doing. Not filling out paperwork. Not smiling at people and interacting and pretending he gives a fuck about pleasing anybody.

And then he meets Kris, who has batshit insane ideas that would require Jeremy to use his hands until they bleed.

It is like someone has rekindled the fire in his eyes.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Scarlett books a movie with Bill Murray. Jeremy sends her flowers and champagne and cites on the card that the champagne is for Raffi, her mother. Somebody’s got to be her knight in tinfoil.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Jeremy drifts farther down south in California because Modesto starts to feel like a trap. For his mom and his brother and sister, there might be something, but for him, the future in Modesto holds nothing but products of boredom. A bad haircut, a good fuck that turns up pregnant, a life of stagnancy and disappointment that he refuses to lie down and take. That, and he’s tired of the dreams about his teeth falling out.

(He’s looked into it, and apparently dreams about your teeth falling out usually represent a rebirth on the horizon, the apprehension and anxiety towards change, the fear of getting older and not having anything to show for it.)  

With all the dreams and schemes that accompany Kris, it only makes sense for Jeremy to pack up and follow his partner in crime down to LA. More property down there, Kris reasons, and more people looking to buy in that area. It makes sense. Plus, in the moments where they’re not spit balling ideas half-high, Kris is acting, and he’s got more job opportunities down in LA.

It makes Jeremy think of Scarlett – he figures it’s not too far-fetched that the two closest friends he’s ever considered himself to have went down the same fuckin’ life path. He can’t determine if it’s predictability, gravity, or just him really missing Scarlett.

Scarlett’s bouncing back and forth between New York and Los Angeles these days for auditions. They still talk, their conversations slower now that she’s busy and he’s off knee-deep in what most people would describe as a fever dream. It’s every now and again and the conversations don’t ever bump over twenty minutes, but he manages to get in a word about how he’s moving and she excitedly starts throwing out words like lunch and dinner and  _I have to see you_ and even an  _I miss you_.

It’s nothing more than talk.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

It turns out that maybe there’s something in his brain after all. It could just be the years of living on a skinny budget that never knew the concept of leg room, or maybe numbers actually make sense to him. He and Kris decide to go in on a property in Nichols Canyon for six hundred thousand dollars despite every person in their lives telling them that it is a financial risk they will never recover from. Jeremy swears that it is a financial investment they’d be crazy to walk away from.

They flip it, and sell it for nearly a million.

They dance their way to the bank and sing Bon Jovi the whole way there.  

**❖ ❖ ❖**

This is what life for Jeremy looks like: wake up at a property that they are flipping, spend all day at a property that they are flipping (not always the one he’s spent the night at) to talk with electricians and doorknob people, sign off on things that need his or Kris’s signature, maybe do something a little tactile like test paint colors or gut the interior (his personal favorite part, it’s free therapy to him), eat a few small meals so he doesn’t pass out, play guitar for a little bit if he’s not exhausted, fall asleep. It’s chaotic and stressful and not what he ever pictured life to look like, but it’s life and he enjoys it. He enjoys the pressure, the racing of the clock, the taking something and making it into something better, the pride that swells in his chest when it’s all completed, the excitement when the cycle begins again.

Life like this makes him actually feel alive.

While his routine differs every day, there are hardly ever any curveballs that aren’t immediately related to the properties he and Kris are working on. So it comes as a complete and total surprise when he wakes up one morning in the Hollywood house to Scarlett Johansson standing on the next-to-nonexistent doorstep with a drink tray in one hand and a plastic bag emblazoned in red ‘THANK YOUS’ in the other.

He has to rub the sleep out of his eyes a few times, the sun outrageously bright for an hour that’s supposedly this godforsaken. “Rise and shine, sweetheart,” she sings playfully once he opens the door.

“What the hell? What is this?”

Scarlett lifts up the bag. “This is called breakfast. A meal in which one eats during the morning time, and  _would ‘ya look at that_  – it’s morning.” She squeezes by him and he acquiesces, mostly because he’s still trying to wake up and process that she of all people is currently walking into the house.

“How’d you even know I was here?” he mumbles as he shuffles along behind her. The house is empty but it’s in better shape than some of their newer acquisitions, with the floors redone and drywall up. He’s got a meeting later today about some granite countertops – the fun never ends in his life. Always something to do.

“Called Kris.” Her voice echoes through the empty house. “I thought you were the type that didn’t let a lady go to voicemail.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

She shoots him a look over her shoulder, the grin curling on the edges of her lips. “Not an excuse.”

“Seriously,  _what_  is this? What are you doing here?”

She unceremoniously sits down in the floor, bag and drinks in front of her as she drops her hands in her lap. “I wanted to see you,” she states. “I’m in between jobs right now, we’re in Hollywood at the same time for once, and I wanted to see you.”

“At six in the morning?” he repeats dumbly. “You’re not a morning person.”

“Yeah, turns out this whole acting thing has a lot of earlier call times than I’d bargained for. I’m now the early bird that catches the worm.” As if to make her point, she picks up one of the coffee cups and raises it. “And lucky for you, I’m in the sharing mood.”

Jeremy’s not sure what to say to that. His brain is having trouble registering everything – it’s six in the morning, and the last time he saw her in person was her high school graduation. That was years ago, of course, and she’s been off making a name for herself while he stays immersed in his work. It’s not like they’re kids anymore. They’re adults and growing apart is natural. He misses her but it’s not like it was when she was busy writing him diatribes in college. She’s mostly a fleeting after-thought, brought on by the littlest of things before it scatters with the wind. He watches her movies when they come out. She sent him a birthday card back in January mocking his age and informing him of the value on the gift card to some fancy restaurant he knew he’d never go to a day in his life. But he figured the seeking each other out thing was just something that was no longer  _them_.

Until now, of course, and he figures he better not look a gift horse in the mouth.

“I’m sure your boyfriend appreciates you spending all your time off with another man,” he comments as he sits down, letting her rip into the bag and pull out all of her purchases. She rolls her eyes at the mention.

“He doesn’t give a fuck whether I’m here or there,” she scoffs disinterestedly. “Probably gonna break up with him anyways.”

“Ooh, does this make me the other man?”  

She passes him a wrapped breakfast sandwich, blatantly irritated by the discussion when their sights meet. “’S long as you don’t tell the tabloids. Or, on second thought, do. Then he’ll break up with me and save me the trouble.”

He laughs. “I don’t even know why you bother dating; you get bored with them way too quick.”

“I keep the fun ones around.” She shoots him an exaggerated wink and he nearly chokes on the coffee she’s brought him. “Not my fault this one’s lost his sparkle.”

“Maneater.”

“Says the manwhore.”

He lifts his sandwich in acknowledgement. “Touché, baby.”

They eat breakfast in the floor of the dining room, laughing and swapping stories from the last few years. When the countertop guy shows up, Scarlett just gives him a look that says  _I’m fine to stay if you want me_. And he does. She stays and looks at all the samples and puts up a hell of an argument for the Santa Cecelia Gold in the kitchens that he surprisingly agrees with.

He tells her that she’s got a good eye and lets her know that if the acting thing gets old, she’s got herself a job with Renner and Winters. She laughs and shoves him gently before propositioning the idea of ice cream.

He spends all day with her by complete accident, and when they get back to the house, he’s got one hell of a goodbye on his lips that he figures will tide them over for the next three years. Instead, she just raises an eyebrow at him while she climbs into her car. “I’ll see you at six, then? Same thing for breakfast?”

“W—what?” he splutters.   

“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly, shoulder inching up in a shrug. “I told you I’m between jobs right now and that I wanted to see you. I’m an opportunist, Renner.” He imagines he looks like a fish that’s been wrenched right from the water and is floundering. “Unless you don’t want me around.”

“No!” The answer is rushed, probably too rushed. “I mean, yes—yes, I want you around. You’re welcome by whenever.”

Her lips quirk into a smile, her trademark look of content. She’s had plenty of practice with it, anyways, seeing as how she’s just about always gotten what she wants. “Great. So, bacon or ham?”

True to her word, Scarlett shows back up at six the next morning with breakfast in hand. He’s waiting for her this time, wearing more than just a ratty pair of pajama pants and a sleepy smile to welcome her in. She spends the whole day with him, too. They head to another property where the kitchen has some ugly ass cabinets in real need of being ripped out and she’s eager to assist in the efforts. He lets her take the sledgehammer to them just for kicks.

She spends the whole week with him, following him like she’s his shadow from the literal crack of dawn up until the sun goes down in the evening. He knows he probably shouldn’t get used to having her this close within reach.

Doesn’t mean he actually listens.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

“Can you do me a favor?” Scarlett asks one night as they’re walking back to his car on the way back from dinner (something Italian and expensive – she’d shot him the glare of death when he had suggested In-N-Out).

“I’m not breaking up with your boyfriend for you.”

“Not what I was gonna ask,” she retorts, sticking out her tongue. “You remember when we were teenagers and I told you when I made it big, I was gonna have you design something for me?”

He stops in his tracks for a moment, making a show of rubbing his temples as he conjures up the memory. “Ah, yes,” he agrees, resuming walking. “You wanted a fashion line. I said hell no.” He points an accusatory finger at her. “That’s still the answer.”

“You didn’t say no to drawing me a tattoo.”

When he turns his head to get a scope on her, she’s already waiting, looking at him with clear eyes. “What,” he says slowly, eyebrows lifting up towards his hairline. “You serious?”

She nods. “Yeah. I wanna get another tattoo and I want you to draw it for me.”

“I refuse to even entertain the idea until you show me the first one.” It’s her turn to stop, shifting her right foot up onto the balls as she gestures down towards her ankle. It’s a tiny little thing, something he really needs more of a close-up look at. “What is it?”

“Two overlapping circles,” she answers.

He draws out a long nod. “Sounds very existential.”

“Wow, four whole syllables. That is a new record for you.”

“Seriously, Scar. What would you even want for me to draw you?” She shoves both hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans rather sheepishly, shrugging.

“I dunno. Maybe a rose or something?”

“A rose?”

“They’re pretty. I like roses.”

He remains a skeptic. “And you’re sure you want me to draw you something that’s gonna be on your body forever? What if you hate it?”

“I’m not gonna hate it,” she shoots him down. “I trust you.”

They head back to the Hollywood house and despite not having any electricity or real furniture in the house, he spends the next three hours drawing her at least ten different roses on the backs of random pieces of paper that he finds laying around the house. He lays in the floor and bears down on a sample of granite countertop while the light of a candle guides his work. Scarlett kicks back next to him and sings Tom Petty when she runs out of things to aimlessly talk to him about.

He finishes drawing somewhere around eleven, satisfied enough with his work to hand her off all of the pieces of paper. “Thank you,” she tells him when he walks her back to her car that’s parked out front. “I’m taking these somewhere tomorrow and getting inked up.”

“You better stop by and let me see it after you get it done. That’s my payment.”

She grins, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. “You got it.”

She shows up sometime around two the next afternoon wearing a tank top that’s got both sides cut out and a ridiculous grin. The rose is tattooed on her ribcage, right underneath her breast.

He tries not to let his mouth go too dry when she shows him his handiwork that’s now forever on her body.     

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Jeremy and Kris sell the Hollywood house for four million dollars. He almost hates to hand over the keys.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Scarlett’s new boyfriend, Jared, is a real piece of work.

It’s the first time Jeremy has truly seen her starry-eyed over a guy, and it baffles him as to why. Normally, Jared’s the exact kind of guy Scarlett wouldn’t spare a second glance towards. But for whatever reasons that are entirely beyond him, Scarlett’s smitten. So smitten, in fact, that she insists Jeremy go out with them one weekend. It sounds like an absolutely horrible idea – third wheeling is not his ideal way of spending his Saturday – but she butters him up by swearing they’ll go to a bar and get drinks and maybe throw darts at a board while she sits back and eats buffalo wings while her two favorite guys bond. She even says he can bring Kris, or a friend of the lady variety, if that’s what it takes.

Because there’s very little that he wouldn’t do for her, he goes.

Jared is every bit an asshole; passive whenever Scarlett says something to him, as if he’s currently imagining himself on another planet rather than being next to her. The only sign that he’s even interested in her is the unfaltering position of his hand right above her ass. Scarlett’s not stupid, Jeremy knows this. Scarlett explained Shakespeare to him his senior year of high school in a way that made sense, Scarlett all but did his statistics homework, Scarlett’s vocabulary is still probably three times the size of his. Yet the way she flits around Jared, cracking a smile or giving him a laugh with every monotonous thing that comes out of his mouth would all suggest otherwise. Jeremy doesn’t know where her brain has gone: sure, love is blind, but it’s not without a shred of common sense. Or maybe it is and he just hasn’t danced this dance in so long that he’s missed out on the new terms and conditions.  

The sex must be out of this world. It has to be if she’s clinging to  _this_  guy like drapes.

How in the fuck Scarlett expects him to bond with Jared is unbeknownst to him, because this is the kind of guy that Jeremy would relentlessly bitch about when in the company of friends, but he does his best to walk the walk even if he is doing so blindly. It turns out that Jared is also an actor – this, in Jeremy’s opinion, explains everything – and has a rock band with his older brother. That fun fact alone explains why Scarlett figured they’d get along. He’d love nothing more than to drag her to the side and tell him that even if they might be of the same coin, they are two very,  _very_  different sides of it.

But he doesn’t. He keeps the mask up and pretends all is swimmingly well, which is a little easier to do when his mouth is occupied with the task of downing scotch. Jeremy’s never seen Scarlett desperate before, but this is what he’d have to classify the whole bonding agenda as. Determination comes engrained in her and Jeremy’s seen what it looks like when she gets all  _woman on a mission_ , but this? This is her trying to wrangle all the stars into her lasso and drag them down to earth so she can hold them in her hands.

He’s halfway to drunk before they’re even an hour into this disaster, and Jeremy’s wishing he’d dragged Kris out to this excursion. Misery loves company, after all.

Scarlett ducks out to go get shots for the three of them, mistakenly leaving him and Jared alone in an uncomfortable tangle of silence. Jeremy couldn’t be bothered as Jared takes the opportunity to size him up.

“You’re into her,” Jared deduces after a moment, more statement than question, and it makes Jeremy laugh into his glass. “You are. Don’t deny it.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea, man. Plus, if you think the jealous schtick will work on her, it doesn’t. Or, at least, it used to not. No telling these days.” He drains his glass, a single eyebrow arched in contest as Jared glares him down from the other side of the table.

“I’m not blind. I see how you look at her.”

“Which is how, exactly?”

“Like I’m not even here.”

Maybe it’s the sense of humor that Scarlett’s attracted to. This guy’s a riot. “Forgive me for looking at my best friend instead of you, princess.”

Jared’s jaw sets. Jeremy knows he’s purposefully poking buttons that he shouldn’t be, but he can’t help himself. “Look, you can dance the dance with denial all you want to. I don’t give a fuck. What I do give a fuck about is you trying anything with my girlfriend and—”

“Relax,” Jeremy sings, leaning back into the booth. “I’ve known her since she was four. Why would I make a move now that you’re with her?”

Jared shrugs. “Jealous schtick might not work on her, but you never said anything about you.”

Jeremy will give him that one, but he refuses to give anything else. Instead, he just looks at Jared until Scarlett returns with their shots and thinks of how satisfying it will be when she inevitably dumps his ass.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Jeremy casually dates a girl named Jes for nearly four years. She is lovely and fantastic and hilarious and more than tolerant of his bullshit and as far as breakups go, it’s amicable. When it happens, she smiles at him sadly and says, “I can tell when I’m not what someone really wants. It’s not fair to either of us to stick around and pretend like that’s the case.”

He won’t know what she meant by that for another year.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

The invitation gets sent to his mom’s house, since he’s still floating around properties and no one knows where in the hell to nail him down these days.

 

 _Mr. Karsten Johansson and Ms. Melanie Sloan_  
_request the honor of your presence_  
_at the marriage of their daughter_

 ** _SCARLETT INGRID  
_****to**   _  
**RYAN RODNEY**_

 _Son of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Reynolds_  
_Sunday, September twenty-seventh_  
_Six o’clock in the evening_  
_Tofino, BC_

_Reception to follow_

 

Jeremy had talked about weddings and marriage with Scarlett before. Whether it came up while they were sitting out on the fire escape and avoiding her parents’ latest tiff, or if she had forced him to watch some movie that had a wedding scene in it. They were on the same page when it came to getting married: it was all bullshit. Scarlett said monogamy was just a construct, that there was no way you could possibly be in love with just one person for the rest of your life. Jeremy said that he never wanted to get married if it looked anything like his mom and dad.

They laughed at the idea of wedding dresses and gaudy cakes and first dances and rings that would just put them further in debt anyways. If there was one thing that either of them knew about the other, it was that love would never look like the typical for them. She’d have her long line of suitors and equally long line of hearts that she’d broken – she wanted to conquer the world, not play housewife. Jeremy didn’t believe there was any point to purchasing the cow when he could get milk for free.

He never said it to her, of course, but he assumed that if he got married to anybody, it would be her. Scarlett just seemed like the obvious choice. She was his best friend and he’d put up with her enough over the years, putting up with her under the rite of holy matrimony didn’t seem like it would be anything different. There wasn’t any romantic intention in the thought – marriage, to him, was nothing more than doing life with someone. With Scarlett, that always came easy.

That all gets brushed to the side and leaves him stunned when he reads the invitation.

He doesn’t know who Ryan is. He’s never met him before. It’s not as though he’s got some screening process that he subjects her boyfriends to, but he figured that if Scarlett thought somebody marriage-worthy, Jeremy would have at least known of their existence.

It’s the first clue that maybe, just _maybe_ , their friendship means more to him than it does her.

Jeremy knows feeling scorned by the fact she’s gone and found a guy she likes – loves – enough to get engaged to without so much as name-dropping to him is stupid. So he crafts himself a hell of a poker face to wear alongside his rented tux and flies to Canada with his mom for the wedding.

Scarlett gets married on a beach in Tofino as the sun begins to sink in the sky. The entire world stops the minute he sees her wearing the white dress, platinum blonde curls getting tangled in her veil as the breeze blows in off the ocean. He’s never been naïve: he knows his best friend is beautiful. Now she’s gorgeous, utterly heart-stopping, old enough to be walking down an aisle arm-in-arm with Karsten and flashing the most devastatingly stunning smile as she walks towards a man she’s supposedly in love with.

It’s like his mom knows every nameless and wordless emotion that’s hitting him at once, because she reaches over after they can be seated and grabs his hand.

It’s a lovely wedding by all accounts. Ryan and Scarlett say their vows over the sounds of waves breaking, talking about how they’ll cherish each other forever and thanking the universe or whatever higher power they believe in that they stumbled upon one another in this lifetime. Ryan dips her down into a kiss that elicits and steals the genuine laugh from her lungs when they’re pronounced man and wife. They dance back up the aisle of flower petals and disappear to go take pictures with the remaining sunlight while everyone else is ushered to the reception area. Jeremy orders the strongest drink that the bartender has, much to his mother’s chagrin.

He’s happy for Scarlett. He is. But happiness is no longer a black and white emotion. It’s a loaded gun waiting for someone to pick it up and fire, its current target beating heavily in Jeremy’s chest.

Scarlett and Ryan return in the blur that the night is becoming thanks to Jeremy’s aid of alcohol. They dance and smash cake in each other’s faces instead of eating it and over dinner, everyone gets to listen to random family members on either side make speeches about their coupledom and how they wish them nothing but the best. Jeremy’s unsure but ultimately grateful he wasn’t asked to say anything. He’s got no idea what in the fuck he would have possibly pulled out of his ass about everything that’s transpired over the last few hours. _Scarlett’s been my best friend since I was six, and while I didn’t know much about this Ryan character’s physical existence until today, I’m sure they’ll live happily ever after in wedded bliss._

The happy couple makes the rounds to speak to everyone after dinner while guests are refilling their wine glasses and slowly spilling out onto the dance floor. Jeremy might drag his mom out for a slow dance or two if the opportunity arises, but he’s content to sit here and talk with the people at his table – Jeremy _really_ likes this Chris guy that’s apparently worked with Scarlett before.

Out of nowhere, a pair of hands covers his eyes and makes the world go black. “Guess who.”

Even over the sound of conversation and dishes clanking, music playing and a weak attempt in lowering her voice as disguise, he could pick her out of a crowd in Times Square with ease. “Lemme guess,” he drawls as he peels her hand off his eyes and swivels in his chair. “It’s the one wearing white.”

Scarlett beams at him so brilliantly he temporarily wonders if he’s gone blind. “Guilty as charged.”

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says as she bends down to kiss his cheek.

“Hiya, handsome. Thanks for coming.” Her arms brush around his shoulders in an awkward halfway hug before she moves on to his mom.

“Oh, Scarlett,” Valerie gushes. “You look so beautiful.”

“You guys did not have to come all this way,” Scarlett insists, and Valerie looks absolutely appalled that she’d suggest such a thing.

“Honey, you’re crazy if you think we’d miss it for a second.”

Scarlett glances back and forth between the pair of them, sights stopping on Valerie. “You wouldn’t mind if I stole your date for a dance, would ‘ya?” Jeremy officially has no idea what in the fuck is happening; he’d like for his mom to say no, but his mom never learned how to tell Scarlett no even after all this time, and he finds himself being sent off to slow dance with the devil dressed like an angel.

“Your husband doesn’t mind?” Jeremy questions apprehensively as Scarlett all but drags him onto the dance floor, eyes shifting to where Ryan’s talking to his mom and everyone else at their table.

Scarlett shrugs as she places her hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Woman of the hour. He gets that. I don’t think he minds sharing for now.” She doesn’t have to say anything else, as his brain automatically fills in the rest. _He won’t have to share me later._

Jeremy doesn’t recognize the song that the band is playing, nor does he know that what he and Scarlett are doing classifies as anything beyond holding each other’s hands and moving somewhat drunkenly in a little box step. “Thank you for coming,” she says after a prolonged silence of Jeremy staring at her forehead – he can’t look her in the eyes. It feels too intimate, too wrong, too uncomfortable all of a sudden. “It means a lot to me that you’re here.”

“Ah, you heard my mama,” he mutters sheepishly. “We wouldn’t miss it.”

She moves a little closer to him, resting her chin on his shoulder as they sway. “Everybody that I love is here,” she sighs quietly, just for the two of them to hear. “Just like I’d pictured in my head.”

_Pictured in my head._

He thought that he was different. That their friendship was different. When he pictured his wedding, he pictured her. And she pictured someone else.

He really thought that he’d been making some valiant effort not to scale over her walls all these years, that he was already inside the fortress and could laugh at all the poor sons of bitches who went falling over the edge for her. Yet here he stands with the wind knocked out of him after one hell of a fall.

Whoever this is that’s dancing with him, it’s not the Scarlett he knows, not _his_ Scarlett. Like wave after wave keeps hitting the shore in the distance, so do the thoughts. She’s not his Scarlett. This is Ryan’s Scarlett, and he’s just got her out on loan for the evening until they ride off in a car with ‘Just Married!’ written on the back windshield. Ryan, who he hasn’t even met until tonight, because Scarlett never bothered mentioning him. She hasn’t been his Scarlett in a long while.

She wasn’t really even _his_ to begin with.

He’s not sure he knows her at all anymore.

Jeremy just barely survives the song and the bone crushing hug that Scarlett corrals him into at the very end that squeezes the last bit of air he was holding in his lungs out. A god above is listening and someone’s appeared behind her to have the chance to say congratulations, so he hastily kisses her temple and bows out the second she turns her back.

He needs air. And now.

He’s stupid for not seeing it earlier, a fucking dumbass for letting it hit him like a wrecking ball when it should just dissolve like a sandcastle being swept under a wave. She's taken the gun, shot him, and he's bleeding out with nobody else to blame but himself. He’s finally seeing Scarlett exactly how he never wanted to, and he’s seeing her for exactly what she’s always been. He’s just another guy she’s wrapped around her finger, playing whatever part she thinks he wants for her to take on so she can get what she wants out of him.

What that is, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t ever want to know.

He could’ve done without figuring out that she’s played the chameleon game with him too. He could’ve gone the rest of his fucking life without realizing that he’s stuck on the outside just like everybody else, and that his love for her was what elevated him high enough to warrant such a nasty fall. He would’ve been happier that way.   

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Standard protocol for the phone ringing in the middle of the night is to let it ring and go straight to voicemail.

Whoever’s calling, however, is relentless.

Jeremy irritably rolls over onto his stomach and reaches out blindly onto the night table, feeling around for his phone. He finds it, hoping that his half-asleep hand is gripped onto it tightly enough when he drags it off the table and closer to his face. He presses the ‘accept call’ button at least three times – two of those attempts are him seeing double and missing entirely – before nestling his head on the pillow close enough to the phone to hear what’s going on. “Hello?”

“I need you.”

 _That’s_  a voice he hasn’t heard on the other end of the line in a while. In fact, part of him is pretty sure that he’s still dreaming.

“It’s…it’s Jeremy,” he mumbles tiredly, because this has to be a wrong number situation. His own mother wouldn’t be needing him at this unholy hour.

“I know,” the voice on the other end bites. “And I need you. Please.”

“Whass’ wrong?”

There’s scuffling on the other end of the line, and the sound of someone hiccupping, maybe? In his sleep-riddled brain, he comes up with three possible explanations: drunk, hurt, or this is all a joke. The first two are all founded on the basis that she doesn’t realize it’s him she’s calling. The third means adding insult to injury.

When Scarlett finally speaks, her voice is so broken up she might as well be drowning in a tunnel. “He’s fucking cheating on me.”

“Hmm?”

He’s witnessed Scarlett pushed to the brink many times, but he’s never been privy to the experience of her outright snapping. Like everything else, it’s messy and uneven and calls specifically for holy fire. “He’s fucking cheating on me! Ryan, he’s…he’s met some other woman during filming and he’s been wining and dining her like he doesn’t have a fucking wife at home and I walked in on them earlier tonight and I’m – god, I’m about to lose my goddamn mind, Jeremy, what am I supposed to do?”

Her screaming isn’t quiet by any means, so he decides out of courtesy he’ll pick the phone up and actually put it to his ear, fumbling with the volume down button. “I…” He sighs. He wouldn’t know how to deal with this if he wasn’t still in a haze. “I dunno.”

There’s a terrifying silence on the other end of the line. “Well,” she starts, voice stopping short as she draws back to think. “Fuck. I don’t know.” More silence. If he were a little more awake, he could probably make out the sound of her ripping her hair out. “Is there any way I can come over?”

Jeremy glances over at the sleeping figure beside him. Thank god this one’s a heavy sleeper – explaining to the woman whose bed he’s in why another woman is yelling at him on the phone at nearly three in the morning is possibly the last thing on earth he wants to stumble his way through. “Now’s not really a good time,” he slurs out.

The response on the other end of the phone is so frosty she might as well be sending the winds of the Arctic through the fucking receiver. “Oh. Okay. I’ll call you later then.” She doesn’t even let him get another word out before the line goes dead.

The last thing he thinks before he succumbs back to unconsciousness is that he should’ve just let her go to voicemail.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Scarlett turns up on his doorstep two months later with red hair and a particularly amplified reckless streak. They’ve _got_ to stop meeting like this because it shaves off a few years and braincells, things Jeremy’s sure he’s already short on and needs all of which he can get.

“Hey, stranger,” she greets him when he opens the door, all sultry smiles and mischief glittering in her eyes. “You got plans for tonight?”

“Uh…” Jeremy blinks a few times, hand gripping onto the door in the hope it will keep him upright. “Hi?”

It’s been a little over two years since he last saw her in person, wearing a white dress and smiling at him as she dumped him in his own grave, writing him off as nothing more than a fool. The red flames of her hair have likely eaten up that white dress the same way it’s devoured the last of her blonde, her face seeming hardened instead of the softened by love features. He gets the feeling that Ryan is history.

“Hey,” she repeats. “Plans. Tonight. You got ‘em?”

“No, I don’t think—”

“Excellent.” She pushes past him on her way over the threshold and into the house. Approximately four thousand questions are bouncing around furiously in his brain; among them are _‘how the fuck did you know to find me here’_ and _‘why are you here’_ and _‘what makes you think that you’re welcome here after the years of your bullshit’,_ but none of them manage to verbalize. He just stands there like someone’s holding his head underwater while he gasps for air.

Scarlett drops down onto the couch, kicking off her tennis shoes and folding her legs underneath her. “I was thinking we could maybe hit up a bar, go shot for shot and see who winds up carrying who home. Or, there’s this new karaoke place on Sunset that just opened a few weeks ago that I feel like you would appreciate—”

“Scar.”

“I mean, if karaoke is not your speed, that’s fine too, I just know I could totally whip your ass around a few Bon Jovi songs—”

“Scarlett.”

“—it’ll be just like old times, me and you—”

“Scarlett, shut up!”

Jeremy’s never yelled at her before, but his patience is officially broken. He doesn’t know where she thinks she has the right to just walk in here after over two years and hit resume when _she_ was the one who shut the door on him in the first place. He’s been busy with work and doing well with burying the knowledge that he felt a little more for her than a friendship at her fucking wedding, whereas she only ever dropped in when she needed something from him: validation, a tattoo design, a warm body.

Her lips snap together and she shrinks back a little into the couch cushions. He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales shallowly. “Look,” he starts, voice gravelly. “I’m sorry for yelling.”

“It’s fine,” she says airily, the dismissiveness and indifference in her voice perhaps the most terrifying thing he’s heard.

“No, it’s not,” he corrects. “I’m just…confused.”

Scarlett gives a half shrug. “You and me both. I signed my divorce papers a week and a half ago and decided the logical thing to do in celebration was dye my hair red.” A hand cards through the aforementioned hair that just barely brushes her collarbone. “I’m a little lost right now. Back in the day, this was the place I came when I felt lost ‘cause I know I wouldn’t feel that way for long.”

Now that he’s had a few years out from underneath her spell, he can see this for what it is: she’s trying to draw him back into her gravitational pull. He can’t figure out the why, though. Is it because she’s lonely? Is it because she’s having an identity crisis? Is it because she realizes she fucked over somewhere down the line when it came to them? Is it really because she’s lost and needs to find herself in whatever memories he’s preserved? Whatever her intentions, it’s got everything to do with her and not a lot to do with him, and that leaves him hesitating.

She then mutters out an addendum. “For what it’s worth, I should’ve been here sooner telling you that I’m sorry. I pushed you out of my life because Ryan was intimidated, and I was so hopelessly and disgustingly in love with him I would’ve pushed Hunter off the Empire State Building if he’d asked me to. It was like…I don’t know. When it came to Ryan, I just became somebody else entirely. Turns out I’m not too fond of her.”

He steals a glance at her, and he sees the twitch in her pursed lips, the little crack of vulnerability that is the telltale sign of her doing what she loathes the most and swallowing her pride. Admitting she was wrong. “And then he went and cheated on me, so it feels like I wasted a whole lot of my life being someone I don’t even like for nothin’.”

“Two years isn’t a whole lot of life,” he argues.

Scarlett scoffs. “In a day and age where climate change is real?”

“Okay, maybe it’s a good chunk of life, but it’s not the end all be all. You’re not sixty.”

“This divorce was the cause of my first few grey hairs.”

“Congrats. For your next birthday, shall I get you your AARP card?”

Her lips crack into a smile. “I’d prefer Life Alert, but whichever your retirement money will afford you, old man.”

“I’m two years older than you.”

“A _lifetime_ ,” she sings, and he feels his spikes start to retract a little. “I really am sorry.”

This should be the part where he tells her to get lost. This should be the part where he holds his ground and refuses to let her back underneath his skin, but he hears the voice of the same five-year-old little girl that wouldn’t eat the crusts on her peanut butter sandwiches who wanted a friend. No strings, no benefits, just a friend. It’s all she wants now at twenty-five.

He pulls out the white flag that he’ll give her when she asks because he used to think himself responsible in making sure he was the only guy who never broke her heart and regardless of everything, he can’t go back on that. He’s the good man in a storm even when she isn’t. “So,” he says with a resigned sigh. “What’s this about a karaoke place?”

The light comes back in her eyes as she gives him all the details and scrounges up a decent shirt for him to wear out. He’s content to observe it when she jumps up on the bar in her rendition of So What by Pink, quiet smile on his face as her eyes never leave him. He watches it up close and personal when they go shot for shot, and he can’t look away when she sends him up with House of the Rising Sun and the entire bar loses their minds at the sound of his voice, her applause and approval the only one he finds himself seeking.  

Maybe all he’s done in pulling out the white flag was fanning the flames. She doesn’t seem like she cares one way or another if they die by fire.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

“It’s okay.”

 _No_ , Jeremy thinks dejectedly, as Scarlett rubs his back. _Everything is most certainly not okay._ It’s 4AM, he’s been throwing up for seven hours straight, and he is beyond ready for someone to put him down and out of his misery.

Scarlett’s sitting on the wall of the bathtub, her hands cold on his clammy back. He’s crumpled in the floor next to his toilet, his shirt off as he sweats out either a fever or the food poisoning that has plagued his life for the last fifteen hours.

He’s a grown ass man and was perfectly content to die all alone, thank you very much. He’d gotten into this mess that way and was fine to see it through in the same manner. But then Scarlett showed up unannounced by to see if he wanted to go for dinner and found him half-asleep (or half-dead, he’s not sure which is more accurate anymore) on his bath mat. He told her to go home.

She laughed in his face and told him he’d have to pick her up and throw her out of his house to make that happen. It was a low blow, mocking the fact that he could barely hold his head up, but he was too exhausted to string those words together.

“Kill me, please,” he groans.

Scarlett chuckles softly, one of her hands gently raking through his hair. “It’s almost out of your system,” she reassures him, her voice like honey as it slides into his muddled brain.

“You said that two hours ago.”

“Hey, I never said I had an MD in food poisoning.”

“You…you can go home,” he mumbles sleepily, suddenly hit with an onslaught of guilt for holding her hostage in his bathroom. “I don’t need you here.”

This time when she laughs, it’s not as soft. The idea, apparently, is hilarious to her. “Get real, Renner,” she says. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

He tries to protest, does his best to push her legs away from him so she’ll stand up and walk out of the bathroom and out of his house to resume whatever wonderful, food-poisoning-free life she was living before she stumbled across this disaster. Instead, the motion of trying to push her is so fatiguing that he just winds up hugging both of her legs like he’s a child. She’s not as cold as the tile floor or the porcelain base of the toilet, but she’s soft and smells good and the sensation of her nails scratching his scalp is enough to put him to sleep.

“C’mon, Jer,” he hears her murmur after what seems like hours. “Let’s get you in the bed.”

For the last fifteen hours, his bed has been the bath mat. Walking is a grueling task. But she keeps a tight grip on his arm and waist as she helps him out of the floor and stumble back into the master bedroom. He’s all but stripped his bed, comforter and blankets and sheets lying crumpled in a tangled mess in the floor from where he nearly had a heat stroke earlier.

Scarlett helps him down onto the mattress and tucks a pillow under his head, asking if he wants a blanket. He groans out something that remotely resembles a no.

She’s officially done all she can for him, so he musters up all his remaining strength to get the thank-you-goodbye bubbling on his tongue. Scarlett, however, appears to have other plans. There’s a slight nudging feeling and then the mattress near his side dips down.

“What’re you doin’?” he slurs out.

Her reply is simple. “Taking care of you.”

He wants to argue that he’s fine, it’s all working its way out of his system and he’s a grown ass man that can take care of himself. He appreciates what she’s done already and doesn’t want for her to feel like she’s got to do anything else. But he’s too tired to try and fight her on something she’s clearly made her mind up about. He shuts his mouth and curls up against her, face nestled in her stomach and his arms looping over her knees while she tangles her fingers back in his hair and resumes the massage.

“Get some sleep,” she whispers. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Jeremy stares at Kris like he’s lost his mind – and as far as he knows, he has. Kris loathes confrontation of any kind. If there’s an issue at a property, Kris sends Jeremy to handle it. Even though Jeremy’s got a nasty temper sitting on a hairline trigger most of the time, Kris is the kind to bury his head in the sand and just wind up fucked over before he speaks up against something that’s bothering him. If it came down to confronting someone or dying, Kris would happily hop right in his casket.

To say that it’s come out of left field for Kris to sit him down and launch into what feels frighteningly like an intervention would be an understatement.

“Can’t do what?” Jeremy parrots back, eyebrows furrowing together.

Kris looks wildly uncomfortable as he navigates through his next sentence. “I can’t…sit here and watch another night of the Scarlett show.”

“The what?”

 “You. Scarlett. Her jerking you around.”

“She hasn’t—”

“Yes,” Kris interrupts, as confidently as if he was naming his price on a property. “She has been. Ever since she got that divorce to what’s his name, she’s inserted herself back into your life because you don’t know how to tell her no.”

Jeremy’s face falls a little. “I do too,” he protests, petulant in nature. “I told her no when she wanted to give me a tattoo the other night when we went to get her bracelet tattoo.”

Kris shoots him a pointed glare. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. It’s the going with her to get tattoos, it’s you two having dinner every other night, it’s her practically moving into the Laurel Canyon property with you while we finish it, it’s her taking you to see Mötley Crüe for your birthday, it’s her suddenly always being around now.”

“She’s my best friend,” Jeremy says.

“Yeah, but she wasn’t being your best friend when she went and got engaged to some other guy without telling you. She wasn’t your best friend while she was married. And you might think she’s back to being your best friend now that Ryan’s history, but she’s not. She’s using you.”

He grinds the words out from in between his clenched teeth. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

When Kris grew this backbone, Jeremy’s got no idea, but he sure does seem pretty apt on using it before it disappears (or before Jeremy breaks it). “See?” he gestures exasperatedly. “This time last year, you wouldn’t have given two fucks if I’d said she was the spawn of Satan. You probably would have agreed with me. But now that she’s back and she’s seemingly put you above everything else, you’re right back on your defensive because _that’s where she wants you_. She’s using you to cope with the loneliness now that she’s divorced, and she knows you’ll give her exactly what she wants without asking for shit in return.”

“You don’t think I don’t remember the shit at the wedding? Those two years? I’m not a fucking moron, Kris, I was there. I didn’t forget it. But she apologized, she proved she was sorry and I forgave her – what kind of friend am I if I hold some dumbass grudge over something that doesn’t matter anymore?”

“It does still matter,” Kris cuts in, his voice grave. “Because she is taking advantage of the fact that you have feelings for her.”

Any other argument Jeremy was holding onto is effectively shell-shocked right out of him. “And don’t tell me that I’m wrong,” Kris warns him. “Don’t try and tell me you don’t love her.”

“I don’t,” Jeremy says, like it’s a reflex. If looks could kill, Kris would have him bleeding out on the carpet. His voice lowers, stressing when he continues. “I _don’t_. Not like that. After her wedding, it was pretty damn clear to me that loving her wouldn’t end well. But you don’t know her.”

Kris doesn’t know how Scarlett made him laugh when his parents got divorced. He doesn’t know about Scarlett doing his stats homework when it didn’t make sense to him. He doesn’t know about how she secretly submitted his notebook doodles to some art contest because she believed in him and believed he could create something. He doesn’t know how she sat there and washed the smell of vomit out of his hair when he had food poisoning and refused to leave until he was rehydrated and could keep a piece of toast down. He _doesn’t_ know the way he feels whenever she’s around – how everything feels right and like the universe is in alignment.

She’s fucked up, sure, but he’s never claimed to be perfect. And if it’s about keeping scores, they’re settled. They’re both back at zero, because if the last year has taught him anything, it’s that sometimes it’s worth it to swallow your pride and the past and just keep moving forward.

“You’re right. I don’t know her. I just see what she does to you, the way she yanks you around and how you gladly hand her the reins so she can.”

“I don’t—”

“Dude.” Kris’s voice is like ice. “Yes. She knows that you will gladly be whatever she wants for you to be, and that you’re never going to ask anything of her back. You’re not going to ask her to do or be something she very obviously doesn’t want to be, and to her, that’s like a dream.”

“Oh, yeah, me not forcing a girl into a corner with an ultimatum, _such_ a goddamn crime.”

Kris’s eyes are clear as he stares straight ahead. “She’s never gonna be what you want for her to be until you ask. She’s just gonna keep doing what she’s doing, and then she’ll leave again, and you don’t get to be surprised by it when it happens.”

“So what then?” Jeremy splutters, feeling his temper spike in his forehead. “What do you want for me to do?”

“Decide. Preferably between telling her how you feel and telling her to get lost, because I just…I can’t stomach this anymore. I can’t sit here and watch another fallout where you get hurt and it’s all because of her.”

“You’re not gonna watch another fallout. We’re not kids anymore, it’s not…that petty shit is behind us.”

Kris doesn’t even respond with an ‘I hope so’ because to Jeremy, it seems that all his hopes are dust.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Scarlett’s filming something up near San Francisco around Christmas, and Jeremy gets the brilliant idea to invite her to Christmas at his mom’s.

“C’mon,” he coaxes her over the phone one night close to Christmas Eve once she gets off from work. “Mama would love to see you again. Kym needs another girl in the house, and Clayton hasn’t been able to use one of his godawful pickup lines on you in so long that I think he just might be going through withdrawals. It’s sad, Raffi. You gonna let a man die like that?”

She laughs into the receiver. “Are you sure?” she asks, hesitation lacing her question. “I really don’t wanna intrude.”

“When in your life have you ever been an intruder in my family?” he retorts. “For fuck’s sake, they’d all pick you over me in a heartbeat.”

“Oh, Renner, don’t be selling yourself short. It’d be at least _two_ heartbeats.”

“Is that a yes?” he questions hopefully. “I mean, if you can’t, it’s alright, but—”

“Jer,” she interrupts him, another small laugh breaking loose. “It’s a yes. I’ll come up sometime tomorrow afternoon once they let us leave.”

And that’s how the next day, Jeremy finds himself helping Scarlett unload a car full of presents and luggage she’s brought with her in order to spend Christmas with him and his family. He tells himself that he did this for her, because she’s missing her family and going back to New York just isn’t in the cards for her right now in the same way that them coming out to California isn’t. He tells himself that if there’s any selfish intention to it, it’s his own in wanting to relive their younger years. That’s it. That’s _really_ it.

But it’s hard to draw a line and convince himself that that’s where it begins and ends when she’s sleeping in his room – he feels like he’s sixteen all over again when his mom says that they’re old enough to make their own decisions and be mindful about whatever it is that they do or don’t do – and is completely enamored with his newest nephew and sitting in his lap when they run out of room on the couch after dinner and sharing his fucking toothpaste. It’s hard to tell himself that he doesn’t want what’s associated with the image of her fitting in so seamlessly with his family.

The night before Christmas Eve, they stay up late watching Christmas movies on TV in the basement. Addie and Beth are so smitten with Scarlett that they have to beg Kym to let them stay up as well so they don’t miss out on a possible second of spending time with her. Scarlett lets them make cookies and shows them how to make hot chocolate the way she and Jeremy had it as kids, made in a slow cooker and with whipped cream instead of marshmallows. The girls shriek in laughter when Scarlett prompts them to tilt their heads back and hold their mouths open, wielding the can of spray-whip cream like it’s a magic wand. They laugh even harder when Scarlett sneaks behind Jeremy and smacks a handful of it square in his face.

They build a blanket fort off of the couch in the basement, Jeremy being delegated to most of the assembly since _he’s_ the one who has the job in building houses. The girls throw popcorn at each other (and at him) while they giggle and decide on a movie. His eyes catch Scarlett’s about the time that he finishes the exterior of the fort and she raises an eyebrow as if to ask _what?_ but he can see it there by her smile, that she’s happy.

About halfway through The Polar Express, Clayton and Nicky decide to crash the party. It makes space under the blanket fort a tight squeeze, with both Addie and Beth balanced on Scarlett’s lap while she leans into Jeremy’s side. They’re asleep by the time the kids make it to the North Pole to see Santa, and Jeremy offers to go take them up to their rooms and tuck them in. When he returns downstairs, Nicky and Scarlett are ganging up on Clayton in his movie selection – they’re all but yelling at him to put on Love, Actually (Nicky vowing to do many unspeakable acts of harm in her own threats) while he does his damnedest to convince them that yes, Die Hard is a Christmas film and that they should respect its status as such by watching it.

“Bro,” he whines. “Help me out here, the film elitist and the actress are killing me.”

Both of Jeremy’s hands lift in mock arrest as he makes his way back into the fort, taking his place next to Scarlett. “Nah, man. You know the women always have their way in the Renner household.”

Nicky fist-pumps victoriously. Scarlett just smiles as she nestles back into Jeremy’s side and holds out his abandoned mug of hot cocoa for him to reclaim.

Christmas Eve is hectic by all accounts. His mom is in the kitchen trying to coordinate Christmas Eve dinner _and_ Christmas lunch all in one go, Kym and Scarlett are the only legitimate reinforcement she receives, his dad and his new wife show up at the front door unexpectedly but still equally as welcome (especially since they come bearing the gift of steaks for dinner), and the kids are determined to make Jeremy’s life hell but he gladly lets them enact their torture. In the free moments, Scarlett’s line of sight will meet his and he gets that weird, warm fuzzy feeling he’s been doing his best to stave off ever since she fell asleep on his shoulder the night before.

“So,” Clayton says once Scarlett steps away to go take a phone call. The three of them are sitting outside before dinner, their watchful eyes keeping track of the kids running around in the backyard. They’re enjoying the weather, the smell of Lee’s steaks out on the grill, and the bottle of wine that Nicky happily retrieved from her room somewhere around happy hour. “Scarlett, huh?”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. Of _course_ his brother waits until she disappears to begin his interrogation. “It’s not fuckin’ like that.”

“Well when will it be?” Clayton presses further. “’Cause if she gets any more draped over you, it’s gonna be pornographic.”

Jeremy balls up his fist and punches his little brother in the shoulder. “Shut the hell up.”

“I’m serious. You need to make your move before I do.”

“You’re not her type.”

“And you’d know all about her type, wouldn’t ‘ya, big bro?” Clayton wiggles his eyebrows. “Look, she’s into you. No girl who isn’t into you would willingly subject themselves to this…well, this circus. I don’t know what you’re waiting on. And don’t you dare say the right moment, either.”

Jeremy begins scratching sheepishly behind his ear. “I just…I dunno, man. It’s Scarlett.”

“Yeah,” Clayton says condescendingly. “It’s _Scarlett,_ who we have all been forced to love and know over the years whether we cared to or not. Mama adores Scar. Daddy thinks she’s fantastic. Nicky thinks Scarlett hung the moon and owns all of her movies because she likes to brag about knowing her. I think you’re a fool for not doing anything sooner because she’s hot as fuck _and_ she doesn’t take any shit. She’s the dream woman. Addie and Beth told Kym today that they want to go over to Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Scarlett’s for New Year’s.”

“Do they know—”

It’s Clayton’s turn to look annoyed. “If two little girls, aged seven and five can see it, then you ought to be able to.” He drains his wine glass, extending it towards Jeremy. “Who knows? Maybe if you get your shit together, they’d be able to go over to Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Scarlett’s for New Year’s.”

Jeremy sees Scarlett come back through the gate, Clayton patting him a few times on the shoulder. “Don’t make me meddle and go pick some mistletoe.”

“Mistletoe doesn’t grow around here, ‘ya idiot.”

Clayton leers like the devil Jeremy knows he is. “She don’t know that.”

“I’m taller than you.”

“Yeah, but _I’m_ not afraid.” And with that Clayton excuses himself, citing that he needs more wine right as Scarlett comes within hearing range.

His brother’s a lot of things, and infuriating has always been one of them.

“I see no children died in my absence,” Scarlett observes, smirk curled over her lips. “Maybe you can be trusted yet with small baby humans.”

Jeremy scoffs. “Kids adore me.”

“Oh, I know. It’s because you guys are all on the same maturity level.”

“Who was that on the phone?” he teases as she sidles back up to him, tucking her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “Your boyfriend?”   

It’s a joke. A goddamn joke like always. He isn’t expecting for her to give him the soft reply, “Yeah.”

But she does, and his head snaps up in a kneejerk reaction. “Wait, what?” He wonders if he’s having more trouble hearing or believing.

Scarlett looks like a kid who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar as she brings her wine glass up to her lips. “Yeah,” she repeats. “It was my boyfriend calling.”

Jeremy wants to ask who, he wants to ask when, he wants to ask many, many, things, but his mind has gone into shutdown. She must sense that she’s caught him off guard (in what way, though, he doubts she’s that clever) because she tilts her head to the side a little. “His name’s Romain,” she tells him quietly.

If he weren’t so stunned by this, he would erupt into laughter. Romain. Like the fuckin’ lettuce. Oh, god, she’s really outdone herself this time.

“I met him a couple of weeks ago through Jade,” she continues explaining, even though he has no fucking desire to hear anything else. “He’s…he’s smart, and he’s really sweet, and it’s a little bit of life imitating art imitating life with _Lost in Translation_ since he hardly speaks any English, but I like him a lot.” She glances over at him, their eyes meeting. “I’d really like for you to meet him sometime.”

He has no intention of that ever happening, but he wordlessly grunts in the hopes she’ll accept it.

As far as Christmases go, it’s probably the worst he’s ever endured.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

When Ryan was in Scarlett’s life, she froze Jeremy out.

With Romain now in Scarlett’s life, it’s Jeremy’s turn to return the favor.

He freezes Scarlett out because he’s angry. At her, at himself, at Romain, at Clayton, at Kris, at everyone he can assign a small percentage of the blame. He cuts her out of his life like there’s a dotted black line showing him exactly where to do his damage, and he does it without hesitation because he’s upset. He’s upset that he didn’t listen, that he didn’t make a move, that the world’s not fair even though he’s known this for a long while now, that she keeps proving everyone but him right. He’s angry and he’s upset and he’s beating himself up and he’s so tired of dancing this dance. He pushes her into a drawer, locks it, and burns the key because he’s done. He’s got to be done.

Fool him once, shame on him, fool him twice, shame on _her._ There will be no third time.

He decides he’s going to show her exactly what she’s missing, though, make her feel as scorned and burned and confused as he did the first time. Punishing her is petty but the spiteful, nasty thing that’s reared its horns once again tells him it’s what she deserves.

Jeremy throws himself into his work. He and Kris live and breathe renovations and flipping and they’ve just started dipping their toes into custom builds. Kris doesn’t say the I told you so that Jeremy knows he is burning to – he gives him a laundry list of things that need to be done and Jeremy gets them all done in record time with impeccable results. They wind up with their magnum opus that year: they buy a property for seven million, which is the most they’ve ever spent on a property, and then they turn around and sell it nearly two months later for twenty-four million. They land a feature in some fancy home magazine for that one, and then HGTV starts calling.

He’s able to help pay for Nicky to go to grad school. He pays off his mom’s mortgage.  

One property that they scout out catches his eye, and he decides that he’s going to go in on it alone, make it an official house for himself. He still loves the thrill of living in a property-in-work, even enjoyed his time in the little townhouse up in Holmby Hills he’d rented, but it’s time for him to grow up and bite the bullet. So he signs on the property in Nichols Canyon and makes that his extracurricular activity.

There are other extracurricular activities, though – on some off nights, he’s at the gym getting himself into the best fucking shape of his life. He’s always been athletic, good at keeping a physique with the job he has, but now he works out to clear his head and breathe easier. If he was stressed, he’d use it as a coping mechanism for that, but the truth is he’s the most blissed out he’s ever been in his life.

The sex helps too.

Sex has been the most enjoyable of his extracurricular activities. It’s typically a different girl every time he goes out and finds someone to take home, but they’re all beautiful and they’re all incredibly great and he can’t complain any. Sometimes if he finds one that’s exceptionally enjoyable, she’ll stick around for a few days so they can really indulge in what the other has to offer. There are a few that he’s introduced to one another all in the name of a threesome, all of which work out even better than he could’ve imagined.

He feels like his skin’s got to be glowing with all the good favor he’s been steadily raking in. And all he had to do was trim out a little toxicity?

He hopes Scarlett’s kicking herself a dozen times over.

What he doesn’t figure out until it’s much too late is that everything grown in spite will eventually turn up rotten.

One of the girls that he found himself particularly attracted to (enough to keep her around for several weeks, enough to make Kris ask if she’s his girlfriend) starts acting funny whenever they link up. It begins with her sleeping eleven and twelve hours after they spend the nights getting creative in how they choose to please one another, and then it evolves into her cancelling their plans because she’s thinking she’s come down with the flu. When she turns up on his doorstep with a bag full of drugstore pregnancy tests and a look in her eyes that’s reminiscent of a feral cat, Jeremy feels the entire world slip underneath his feet and lurch him into free-fall.

Sonni’s pregnant.

Life the way he knows it is officially over.

This life doesn’t include Scarlett, either.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Ava Berlin Renner is born on March 28th. Jeremy thought love at first sight didn’t exist and then someone handed him a little pink bundle that screamed at a pitch that broke his heart and put it right back together in her own image. There’s only one truth left in his life: he is hers. Whoever this beautiful little creature grows into, wherever she goes, whatever she does, he is hers. He belongs to nobody but the little girl in his arms that’s curled her entire hand around his index finger while winding his entire existence around her pinky.

Two months later, Jeremy and Sonni get married. There are no frills, no fuss about it – they have a courthouse wedding and some of his family comes down later that weekend for a celebratory picnic.

Everything with Sonni makes him feel as though he’s driving through fog. Ava, however, is the tiny spot in the cloud where the sun dazzles through, and for him, that’s all he needs to be okay.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

The invitation is waiting for him in an otherwise empty mailbox one day, solitary in presence like it’s the fucking grim reaper.

 

 _Together with their families_  
**_SCARLETT & ROMAIN_**  
_Invite you to celebrate their marriage_  
_10 AM —— October 1 st_  
_Philipsburg, Montana_

 

This time, he leaves his tux in the closet and the cost of a plane ticket and pointless wedding gift in his bank account. Instead, he doesn’t mention it to Sonni – he knows she’d love the excuse to go to a wedding, put on a pretty dress and pour on the PDA. He sends the invitation straight through the shredder once he finishes reading it, and then on the day of the wedding, he spends the entire day with Kris getting so wasted he wouldn’t have known up from down should somebody bother asking.

A celebration indeed.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Jeremy finds out that Scarlett is pregnant when he’s on the phone with his mom one day, sharing the news that she heard from Melanie’s Facebook in a fleeting mention. He finds out about her having the baby the same way. It’s a little girl, his mom tells him.

He sends her a bouquet of roses.

It is by no means an olive branch.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Chris Evans becomes an unlikely friend of Jeremy’s. He’s off doing huge movies that are raking in millions at the box office, and he reaches out to Jeremy to see if he can maybe make some magic happen, renovate a property he’s just forked out a pretty penny for. He offers Jeremy and Kris an equally pretty penny to do the work on it, and Jeremy’s the kind of guy who can absolutely be persuaded for the right price.

It also helps that he really, really likes Chris, and that Chris encourages Jeremy to bring Ava over on the days they’ll both be at the house so Chris can watch her – he loves babies, and he _really_ loves Ava. (Jeremy gets it. He too thinks the world of his daughter.)

They get close over the renovation, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when Chris invites him, Kris, and their respective significant others to his upcoming birthday party. It’s the furthest thing from Jeremy’s scene; it’s at some upscale club in Hollywood that has an address that doesn’t even appear on a GPS, probably because the entrance Chris has given them is meant to be concealed from where the general public can locate. Kris isn’t keen on going, but Jeremy is. Like Sonni would let him skip over some opportunity that could help her make a connection or two.

He bites his tongue from saying that this has nothing to do with her. Instead, he hands over his card and lets her go pick herself out a new dress.

Jeremy is not the type to fit into the scene that surrounds himself at the party once they get there, but he’s good at being a chameleon. With Sonni hooked on his arm and a glass of bourbon, he can convince anyone of anything. Chris greets him with a hug and introduces him to a few of his friends, costars of his that Jeremy finds himself somewhat starstruck by meeting. He isn’t naïve enough to pretend that Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo aren’t worth the hype they garner.

The food is good, the music’s a little loud for his tastes but he recognizes most of the songs, the alcohol stays flowing, and for the most part, the company he finds himself in the presence of is tolerable. Sonni takes to Downey Jr.’s wife with one skip of a beat and the people that buzz in that general circle leave stars in his eyes. There’s a girl, twenty-something and a little more reserved from the bunch that Jeremy finds himself striking up a conversation with as the rest of them start to lose him. Her name is Elizabeth, and Jeremy winds up in stitches at some dry comment she makes under her breath. It provokes a smile from her, and he’s instantly marking her down as somebody that he genuinely wants to be friends with beyond this.

“I’m running dangerously low on spirit,” Elizabeth muses at one point, and Jeremy’s eyebrows knit together.

“Spirit? It’s a party. There’s plenty of spirit around you.”

“No,” she shakes her head as she lifts her empty glass. “Spirit.” Ah. Well, that certainly makes a little more sense. “And by the looks of it, so are you. Wanna accompany me to the bar for a little refill?”

He gladly accepts the offer, not before he steals Sonni out of her conversation with Susan with a kiss on the cheek. “Goin’ to get another drink,” he informs his suddenly surprised wife. “Want anything else, doll?”

“I’m fine, babe.” Sonni smiles sweetly at him in thanks, enough to make him stop and consider how attractive she is, make him feel the tiniest surge of happiness that she’s here and everyone here with them gets to know she’s his.

Jeremy imagines that when you’re an actor, you know many people that you consider a friend and would therefore invite all of said people to your birthday party. He certainly believes that’s true, judging by the amount of people concentrated in the same area as the bar that have had the same idea as him and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth engages him in small talk while they wait – what they each do, how they know Chris, the little things that aren’t really all that little when it comes to first getting to know someone. They inch their way up closer and closer to the bar as people filter in and out with drinks in their hands that they didn’t start off with.

“What are you thinking?” Jeremy asks Elizabeth once they’re a few people off from being right at the bar.

“That birthday special,” she replies, head nodding in the direction of the special list that’s hanging on the wall behind the bar tailored with drinks all in honor of Chris. “Sounds pretty good, anyways.”

He’s fully prepared to order for the both of them since he figures he can elbow his way in front of Anthony Mackie and not feel remorse about it later (or maybe he will, but he imagines it’ll be easier for him to get over it), and then he catches a voice drift over his head and the general scuffle of noise around them as it finds his ears.

“Martini, extra dirty, double the olive if you can.”

He would know that order anywhere. He’s just not sure why it’s _here._

And then he’s reminded, why wouldn’t it? They were friends. Chris went to her first wedding, probably was at her second too. Perhaps she was a better friend to him than she was Jeremy.

He’s so rooted in place by the sound of Scarlett’s voice that he misses the chance to jump in front of Anthony in getting his and Elizabeth’s drinks faster. His eyes are darting in every possible direction to find her, figure out where she’s at and hopefully before she spots him so he can make a point of avoiding her. In his ribcage, his heart is beating wildly as it threatens to drop farther in his chest.

Elizabeth’s tiny elbows prove to be more use than his entire body, because she’s wriggled her way up to the bar in his moment of being frozen in time. “Hey, Jeremy!” she calls to catch his attention.

It also catches Scarlett’s attention. Turns out, she’s the blonde with the pixie cut standing next to Elizabeth.

Jeremy orders his feet to move despite the weight of the glare that is now attached to him. He walks right up behind Elizabeth and gives his order over her shoulder. Curiosity kills the cat every time, yet he still works up the nerve to glance in Scarlett’s direction.

She looks absolutely nothing like herself – or, at least, the Scarlett he used to be familiar with. Her blonde hair is in a pixie cut, her face all harsh lines and much narrower than it used to be. He notices that the black dress she’s wearing doesn’t hug her curves in all the right places because she doesn’t seem to have them anymore. There are a thousand things swimming in her eyes but they’re all tinted in the same shade of green that seemingly order him to stay the fuck away.

He’s happy to oblige, making a point of keeping his mouth set in a hard line as he turns his head back. A bartender returns with a martini and hands it off to her. Just like that, she’s gone, but not before she purposefully bumps into him on her way out.

It’s the lasting impression she always likes to give. Apparently, that is now reduced to body-checking him so he’s made aware of how pissed she is. Specifically, with him.

“You know Scarlett Johansson?” Elizabeth shakes him loose from his thoughts yet again, the twinge of excitement in her voice.

He shrugs. “Used to.”

**❖ ❖ ❖**

When Jeremy and Sonni fight, they go to war.

These days, they fight more than they do anything else. They fight about Jeremy’s work schedule. They fight about Sonni’s work schedule. They fight about Sonni’s job in general. They fight about Kris. They fight about Ava. They fight about the location of a toothbrush and underwear on the floor and what is or is not in the fridge. They fight about the future. They fight about the past. They fight about the now. They fight about getting a divorce. They fight about staying together and making it work for Ava’s sake.

When they fight, there’s pointed glares and ugly words and flared tempers. It’s like trying to budge a mountain in a different direction and neither of them can decide which direction to push. Jeremy never expected to find himself in a loveless marriage, but he also never expected to find himself in a marriage to begin with. It’s clear that Sonni only ever wanted him for one thing and she’s beginning to accept the reality she will never get that. A shame she was too blind to see that before she shacked up with him, but Jeremy figures you aren’t living if you aren’t learning.

“Admit it,” Sonni snarls at him one night when they’re fighting about something trivial that Jeremy’s completely lost sight of. “Getting married was all some big joke to you.”

If they’ve danced this dance once, then they’ve done it a hundred times. “You wanted to get married, Sonni, I was just doin’ what _you_ wanted.”

“And _you_ wanted it to be her.”

She may as well have thrown a bucket of ice water at him. “What?” he asks, because this is not their usual tangle.

“You heard me,” Sonni says, the simple flick of her wrist sending a curtain of brown hair off of her shoulders. Her glare is weaponized as she target-locks on Jeremy. “You wanted to have all of this with her, and I was just some good-enough that you settled for.”

“Her?” he fires back. “Her who?”

Sonni laughs, the sound so frigid that he can feel the ice nicking his skin. “Oh, don’t play dumb with me.” He just stares back at her, bewildered, and this amuses her so much that she erupts into another peal of shrill laughter. “God, you’re such a fucking pussy. _Scarlett_ ,” she spits the name out like it’s a grenade. “I’m talking about Scarlett! You wish it was her you’d gone and fucking knocked up, married, had a kid and a life with.”

“I told you, she’s never wanted me like that—”

“Yeah, but that’s never stopped you from wanting her like that, has it?” He’s silent, which gives her the exact ammunition she needs in order to start firing. “I hear the way everyone in your life talks about her and what you two had. I was fine letting her be a ghost in your closet because she was long gone by the time I came around, but I’m living in a goddamn haunted house.”

“No one is making you stay!” he shouts in exasperation, both arms flying open. “Not a fucking soul!”

“Yeah, but I stayed, didn’t I?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sonni, don’t act like you did some noble thing—”

“—I had your fucking kid. I moved in. I accepted your proposal. I’ve spent the last ten months—”

“—oh, wow, _ten months,_ someone give this woman a medal—”

“—with you, staying, even on the nights where I wanted nothing more than to be three thousand miles from this godforsaken house. I stayed, when I should have done _exactly_ what Scarlett did. I should have dipped the literal second you gave me enough room to breathe and see that you were nothing more than a waste of time that would never be worth it!”

“Get the fuck out of my house,” he snarls. He is hanging on by a fraying thread, everything in his vision red, fists curled up at his side and trembling. His voice is dangerously low because he knows he is a hairline fracture away from exploding and making a mess of things when he does. “Get. The fuck. _Out_.”

Sonni has a sick smirk on her face when she storms out of the house with Ava on her hip, slamming the door behind her.

Jeremy breaks every piece of fine china that he owns.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

On the day that his divorce is finalized, it rains.

For some people, it'd be perfectly fitting weather. Jeremy is not some people. Jeremy is the person who wishes for sun and clear skies when his divorce is finalized because it's the first time since before Ava was born that he's been able to breathe. His marriage is over and he wants nothing more than to feel the light of freedom warming up his skin. But, of course, it rains the day it's officially over, as if forcing him to cling to the last little bit of misery Sonni and being married to her can elicit from him. It's a loud thunderstorm that brings rain down in sheets so opaque he can barely see through the window at the trees in his backyard.

He doesn't have Ava this week, and Kris is staying at one of their acquisitions that's less than two weeks out from being ready to go on the market. It's just him and his lonesome, sitting in a mausoleum of a house while the rain echoes on the roof and his Beatles record leaks through the living room. He sits on the couch and nurses a glass of scotch as he listens to the music and tries to melt away the time at his will. Boredom is a dangerous emotion – inviting Sonni over all those years ago was in a moment of having nothing better to do, and he likes to think he has since learned from that mistake. It could also just be the fact he's five minutes out of a marriage he swore was going to be the very thing that killed him and he's got a good, if fleeting sense of clarity about him.

The doorbell pierces through the music and the semi-comatose state he's slipped into, leaving him rooted in place for a moment. He can count the number of people on his hands that would possibly be out front: over half of them couldn't be, and the remaining contenders are all people he has no desire looking in the eye. Jeremy pulls himself off the couch and treks through the house into his office to look at the cameras. The glass of scotch doesn't leave his hand as he flips through all the different cameras to get to the front door. Through the rain, he can make out a black car sitting in his driveway, his flood lights causing the silver Mercedes emblem to glint. 

He knows all of zero people who own a black Mercedes, so he flips to the camera that's directly over the front door and the person that's standing on his doorstep wipes clean any remaining thoughts in his brain.

By the time he makes it down to his front door and undoes all the locks, Scarlett appears to be completely soaked through by the rain. Blonde hair is sticking flat to her forehead, her clothes clinging tightly to her frame. She's never looked this small before, her green eyes wide when they meet his. "I heard about your divorce," she says once they're finally face-to-face.

Words lodge in his throat that won’t come out. The look of confusion on his face (or the lack thereof) must be enough to clue her in, though, because she launches into an explanation. “Our moms still talk.”

Well, that makes sense. His eyes flit over her – she’s shivering, doing her best to ignore it as she straightens her spine and pushes some of her wet hair back. "But we don’t. And I don’t know why. I don't know when we stopped being friends," she yells over the harsh sound of rain beating down on the concrete. "But I'm over it."

In the now-hollowed out cavity of his chest, he knows the answer. They stopped being them when she got married to Ryan, and then Romain, and did everything under the presumption that he would always be around. They stopped because it hurt too much to continue being friends when she decided that she only wanted him at her own convenience and he decided she wasn’t worth the treacherous climb over her walls. He doesn’t say that though. Instead, he looks into her eyes and mutters the only thing that’s still at the forefront of his mind. “I got divorced today.”

Scarlett nods, and the next thing he knows she’s closed the space between them with her arms cinched tight around his neck and face buried in the crook of his neck. She hugs him so tightly that for a moment, he can fool himself into feeling something other than robbed, hollow, and outcast. For a moment, he can fool himself into believing that she’s done playing the games and is finally letting him in.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Ava and Scarlett’s daughter Rose aren’t very far apart in age, so playdates are something that Jeremy anticipates when Scarlett returns to his life once again.

He treads lighter than he ever has around her; it’s not just because she’s married and he’s coming off a bender of a divorce. He’s got a precious little girl now that he will not subject to any more strife than she’s already got waiting on her thanks to the fallout of her parents. For years, it’s been Scarlett and her infamous walls, but this time he’s got four of his own and they’re all built for Ava. He’s good at building things, after all. It’s about time.

Jeremy remains dubious that his and Scarlett’s friendship will ever be like it once was. He’s okay to turn to a new page, though. As long as it doesn’t wind up with them just ripping them all out and throwing them through the shredder in the end.

Playdates are a nice foot to start off on. They tend to hang out at his house in the canyon since Scarlett doesn’t like the thought of paparazzi swooping in. Ava and Rose play as much as they can for a couple of kids who are just barely over the age of one while Jeremy and Scarlett sit with them, keeping a close eye on their girls and occasionally carrying on a conversation.

A lot happened in the time that they went without talking, so they have a lot to catch up on. He tells her about how HGTV is still bugging him and Kris to do at least a special, about how Nicky’s got a kid now, launching into little stories about Ava because Ava will always be the easiest thing for him to talk about. She tells him about how Hunter can’t keep a girlfriend, how Vanessa finally got her Equity card a few months back, and about her most recent projects in between little stories about Rose because Rose seems to be the easiest thing for her to talk about.

She doesn’t make much mention of Romain, though. Whenever she does, she rolls her eyes and seems annoyed by a mere reference to him. Either they’re neck-deep in married couple status, or he genuinely gets on her nerves.

It turns out that it’s the latter. He finds out during one playdate after she asks him about what all properties he and Kris are working on now and he feels obligated in asking her where she’s living at these days.

“It’s all a mess,” she informs him with a ragged sigh, her back leaned against the foot of the couch. “Most of my work is here, but most of his work is back in France. We’re renting a house here, and then I’m still paying rent on my apartment in New York because I don’t know how to give that up, and he’s making payments on our house in Paris, which you wouldn’t _believe_ the cost of, and it’s getting to all be a little too ridiculous even for me to get behind.”

“You never did take kindly to bullshit even in your prime, Scar,” he points out.

She smiles wearily. “Oh, what, I’m not still there? I’m almost twenty-nine, Renner, I’m not dead.”

“Touché.”

A hand knots up in her blonde hair, snagging as she runs her fingers through it. When he’d asked what spurned the decision to chop all her hair off, her explanation was that she was in love, pregnant, and working – she didn’t have time for trivial things like doing her hair. She claimed Romain hated the short hair and was egging her to grow it back out.

Not that she asked for his opinion, but Jeremy liked the pixie cut on her.

“He wants to live full-time in Paris,” Scarlett continues. “I keep telling him that there’s just no way I can do that, not if I want to keep working.”

“Which you want to,” Jeremy finishes for her. She nods.

“He claims I’ve done my time, that I can afford to at least take a few years off to take care of le bébé, that Hollywood will still be here whenever she’s in school.”

Jeremy gives her a puzzled look. “Does he have any idea how your job works?”

“Thank you,” she sighs in exasperation. “And even if I did want to take some time off, I wouldn’t want to do it living in Paris full-time.”

“Not in love with the city of love?”

“I’d hardly call it that. It’s a frillier version of New York with just as aggressive people. At least in New York, what you see is what you get. I don’t like the whole deceiving appearances thing. That, and the fact that they find _snails_ a delicacy makes my skin crawl.”

“Escargot isn’t that bad,” he reasons to her utter horror. “You’re just a picky eater who thinks the crusts on a peanut butter sandwich are of the devil.”

“Because they are! Wait, when did Jeremy Renner, king of Subway, branch out and eat snails? Are there pictures?” she asks somewhat excitedly, sitting up a little straighter as a smile inches onto her lips. “Please tell me there’s pictures. Or video footage.”

“Uh, neither. Just because I joined Instagram doesn’t mean I suddenly document every waking moment.”

“Bummer,” she winces as she falls back against the couch.

“Where would you take time off? ‘Ya know, if you actually wanted to.”

She doesn’t have to contemplate on that question for long. “Easy. I’d go back home.”

“You’d go back to the city?”

She scrunches her nose. “Well, maybe not back to the city. Stick to the outskirts near Jersey or along the Hudson. There’s a lot of pretty houses out there.” When he gives her a quizzical glance, she tilts her head towards where Rose and Ava are sitting. “When that one keeps me up at night, I’ll sometimes look at what’s on Zillow. Good way to pass the time.”

He must be staring at her or something, because her face crinkles and her eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline. “What?”

Jeremy is quick to shake out of whatever absent space of thought he’s entered. “Nothing. I just, well, can’t see you not living in a big city. You thrive off of a hustle and bustle.”

“If I had a pretty house, I’d thrive anywhere.” She shrugs, both hands falling in her lap. “Maybe I’ll be able to talk Romain into looking out that way if I ever put a break in my deck of cards. I could have somebody build me a house, have them add on an art studio and he’d be content anywhere in the world I dropped him.”

“Sounds like it’d be nice.”

Scarlett smiles, both lips pressed together in a neat line. The expression doesn’t translate much happiness. “Yeah, I suppose.”

**❖ ❖ ❖**

The weeks where Ava isn’t in the house are some of the loneliest, but Jeremy hasn’t yet succumbed to the temptation. He steers clear of the mistake he made that gave him Ava to begin with and pours so much of himself into work while she’s gone that he could hardly be considered a person.

He stays up throughout the night, doing the tedious things like filing paperwork, designing blueprints, writing emails, leaving a flurry of sticky notes on his desk for future him to read and act accordingly on. Sleep is for the weak. Sleep doesn’t come easy to him anymore, and sure, he’s got the bags under his eyes to prove it, but productivity triumphs over sanity these days.

It’s nearly two in the morning, Jeremy hunched over a floorplan that’s got a deadline rapidly barreling his way when his phone rings. His first instinct says that it’s Sonni, calling about Ava, but his mind quickly does the math for what the time difference would be and that instantly flies off the table of possibility. He slides the phone closer to him, glancing at the caller ID.

_Scarlett Johansson._

Brows furrowed, he picks the phone up and accepts the call as he brings it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Jeremy!” She drags his name out in three long syllables, the sing-song infliction in her voice full indication that she’s not sober.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Nuh-uh,” she hums a little too delightedly for someone who’s supposedly not okay. “Can you…can you…”

“Can I what?”

“Pick me up?”

“Scar, it’s two in the morning,” he finds himself saying, as if she’s got any idea of what time it is. “Where are you?”

“In Hollywood. ‘Atta bar.”

He sighs, hand hovering over his hip as he stares down at the floor plan he’s not made much headway on in the last few hours. He supposes that the next hour of his life wouldn’t make any difference. “You sober enough to drop me your location?” he relents, freeing the pencil in his hand and letting it fall onto the surface of his desk.

“Yeah,” she says, words blending together. “You comin’ to get me?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“My knight in shining armor,” she trills, giggling as the words roll off her tongue. “Looooove youuuuu.”

He ignores her, mostly in favor of trying to slip his shoes on with one hand. “Stay put ‘til you see me, okay? I’m on my way.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

She ends the call, and he instantly has no idea what he’s signed himself up for.

True to her word, she’s at some bar in downtown Hollywood, waiting outside with her shoes in her hand. The sight of it rattles him: he’s seen her drunk before, when they were both teenagers sneaking bottles from Adrian’s room. He knows she can handle her liquor like a pro, able to drink him right under the table without batting an eyelash. But she’s absolutely hammered, so drunk that she’s swaying slightly as she grips onto his forearm to help steady herself. She lets him tuck her into the passenger seat of his Porsche without any protest, folding her legs up underneath her despite the fact she’s wearing a dress that barely stops mid-thigh. Jeremy has to slam the door so quickly that he hears it hit her kneecap – she might disapprove of the bruise she winds up with later, but she’ll thank him once she’s sober for managing to keep her vagina from being front page news.

Whatever’s going on with her is likely not good.

She doesn’t speak once he gets back in the car. He whips out of his parking spot and back onto the road, realizing that he’s just driving aimlessly. “Am I taking you back to your place?” he asks her quietly.

Scarlett shakes her head profusely, blonde hair spilling in her eyes. “No,” she insists. “No way. No fuckin’ way.”

Right. Okay. That’s apparently a sore nerve that he probably shouldn’t push on again. “Ah…” Jeremy scratches at his neck as he flips his turn signal on. “You mind if I take you back to mine, then?”

Her head rolls along the headrest so she’s facing him, loopy smile on her face. “Is that what you say to all the girls?” she sings playfully. “Is this what it’s like to be one of your little hookups?”

He rolls his eyes. He forgot how obnoxious she was whenever she got drunk. “Take me back to your place,” Scarlett instructs, as if she came up with the idea herself.

By the time he’s helping Scarlett up the steps into his house, it’s edging on three-thirty. She’s still swaying when she walks, relying mostly on him to bear the majority of her weight and usher her wherever he deems fit. Jeremy decides to spare her from climbing yet another staircase and steers her towards the guest room on the first floor.

All of the giggly teasing has run its course, leaving only a bundle of limbs and heap of generally negative emotion in its place. “C’mon, Scar,” he encourages her. “Let’s get you in the bed.”

She shakes her head in protest. “No arguing it,” he warns, but she does anyway. She tries to resist, weakly pushing up against his chest. It’s barely a nudge, but she must think it to be equivalent of a shove.

“Fuck you,” she slurs.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters disinterestedly. “Fuck me. I’m the worst.”

“Fuck men,” she continues with her rant as they make their way down the hall. “You’re…you’re all the fuckin’ same. You think with your dicks, and you’re all hopeless. You’re the worst. Ruined my goddamn life.”

“Your life is fine, babe.”

Her eyes cut through him like he’s made of paper. “Oh yeah?” she sneers. “Tell that to the divorce lawyers I had to meet with earlier tonight. Tell that to the custody battle I’m about to…march onwards into!”  

Jeremy freezes in place. The puzzle pieces all start to come together; why she’s so drunk, why she’d even go out on a Wednesday night to start, why she didn’t want to go back to her house. Why she called him to come get her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she accuses him, her voice suddenly watery. “Please don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not…” It’s a lie, though, and they both know it.

He helps her into the bedroom and sits her down on the edge of the bed. “Want me to find you something else to wear?” he asks her.

“I want you to find me a new life,” she counters, the tears starting to slide down her face as she lays down and curls up on her side in the middle of the bed.

He sighs, pulling off the Guns n’ Roses t-shirt that he’s wearing and offering it out to her. She takes it, but instead of slipping it on, she just balls it up and tucks it under her cheek. “I hate mine,” she continues through her tears. “I hate it. I just want to disappear and be somebody different.”

Jeremy picks up the blanket that’s resting at the foot of the bed, unfolding it and then throwing it over her body. Scarlett balls up like a child while he tucks the edges of the blanket up snugly at her neck. “You can be somebody different tomorrow. Every day, if you want,” he tells her. Most of it is just to appease her, of course, but the way it sounds is promising even to him.

He leans down to kiss her forehead in the same way he’d tuck Ava in, and the next thing he knows, he’s got a pair of arms around his neck holding him prisoner. She holds him there, arms tightening like a python while she just sobs, and he lets her.

“Get some sleep, Scar,” he whispers as he pries her arms off of him and adjusts the blanket around her. She’s got his t-shirt right underneath her cheek and it seems as though her entire body has curled around it. “You can worry about being somebody new tomorrow.”

She’s asleep before he can even make it out of the room.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Either Scarlett has become an expert in compartmentalizing her emotions, or she just _really_ doesn’t care all that much about the finalization of her divorce. She also seems to write off getting a divorce as the excuse to jump the gun on all of her insane ideas that seemingly pop into her brain out of thin air.

With Ryan, it had been spending a straight week at a karaoke bar. With Romain, it’s throwing a one-night charity play.

The idea in theory sounds lovely. She’s doing something truly productive and charitable in lieu of what some would consider a truly devastating life event, something that will bring light into her soul or whatever philosophical bullshit someone would suggest. Jeremy’s proud of her for it, really. It’s a lot healthier than doing enough shots to fill up an entire tequila bottle on a Monday evening.

And then, she really cements her certifiable insanity post-divorce by asking him to be a part of said play.

He stares at her over the lid of his coffee like she’s just told him she was from Mars. “You are joking.”

“I’m as serious as a heart attack,” she informs him.

“No. No way.” Across the table, Scarlett pouts, and Jeremy can’t help but to find the absurdity in all of it hilarious. “Scar,” he lets her down in between his laughs. “You are an actress who has worked with fuck only knows how many actors over the last…however many years. Go call Brad Pitt and have him do it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Gimme a break. He wouldn’t do it even if the charity was his checking account.”

“What about Chris?” he asks, leaning back in his chair.

“Evans?”

“You know any other Chris?”

“You must not know me very well; I’ve already strong-armed him into doing it.” Jeremy just nods, the amusement still forcing his lips up into a smile. He can’t help but to laugh. Her attempt of recruitment is ridiculous. _Ridiculous_. He hasn’t acted a day in his life and she knows this.

“Excellent, so this conversation can come to an end, then?”

“Wrong. C’mon,” she pleads, turning on those goddamn puppy dog eyes of hers. “Please? It’ll be fun. And it’s not like I’m asking you to memorize Shakespeare – it’s literally just sitting on a stage reading from a script. You could do it in your sleep.”

“Scar, no one is gonna want to pay five dollars to come see a guy they don’t know from Adam be in some play, much less whatever astronomical price you’re about to set tickets at.”

“I want you there, is that not enough?”

He gives her a sad smile as he takes another sip of his coffee. “Not when you know that I am _not_ an actor. I build houses, sweetheart.”

“It’s reading a play,” she counters. “You know how to do that, right?”

His face falls. “Well, yeah, but—”

“—and we’d get to spend time together—”

“—yes, but—”

“—and it’s for a great cause, and I’ve already done the math; you wouldn’t have Ava the week I’m thinking of do it so there’s really not much of an excuse for you _not_ to say yes.”

“Wait, hold on, go back—you’ve done the math? Are you fucking stalking me?”

“Is it a yes?” she retorts, wrangling him loose from wondering how in the fuck she knows his schedule. He’s predictable but not that predictable.

He thinks.

She glares at him pointedly, the two of them locked in a standoff. Jeremy finds himself caving first, like always, rubbing at his ear sheepishly. “Scar, I don’t know,” he admits. “I just…you could find somebody better. Somebody who actually does this.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t _want_ to find somebody better. I want you.”

Scarlett is easily the most determined woman he’s ever met, and she always gets her way. Always. He’s gotten better at letting her down as the years have gone on, but sitting there under the weight of her green eyes makes him uncomfortable when he knows he’s going to say something she doesn’t want to hear. Finally, he sighs. “What play is it?”

“Our Town.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a binder, passing it off to him. “I want you to play George.”

He opens the front of the binder and begins to thumb through all of the pages bound within the rings. “This isn’t me saying yes,” he rushes to tell her.

“Of course not,” she agrees.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll make the right decision.”

One of his eyebrows arches in question. “For who, me or you?”

She just grins at him as she breaks off another piece of her cookie and pops it in her mouth.

In the end, he winds up making the decision that best suits her. It’s very much last minute, to the point where she’s leaving him four voicemails a day and sounds like she’s on the verge of ripping her hair out (or ripping out his throat, whichever her hands reach first) and he figures leaving her hanging any longer will result in bloodshed. He still thinks she’s lost it for wanting him to be a part of this, but he tells her that he’ll do it.

Sure enough, Chris is there, as are Robert Downey Jr. and Ruffalo. It’s nice to at least have a few familiar faces aside from Scarlett, faces that are surprised but happy nonetheless to see him. “I didn’t know you acted, man,” Chris mused when Jeremy came walking into the theatre.

Jeremy’s response was simple: “I don’t, but what the lady wants—”

“—she gets.”

Scarlett’s hell in a sundress as she tornadoes through the theatre prior to showtime, even though she’s specifically delegated the task of stressing about everything to Downey Jr. She’s a perfectionist though, something Jeremy has known since the days of her letting him share her coloring books and nearly ripping him a new one for not following her meticulous, often unspoken order of how she finished each sheet. Besides, it takes a perfectionist to spot another one.

When she sees him, though, it’s as if the world can afford to stand still for a second. She actually lets Downey do his job and ushers him off to one of the dressing rooms where she’s ordered take out or sits on a corner of the stage to go over notes with him – because yes, he is intimidated out of his fucking mind and yes, he is entirely out of his depth here – or just engages him in some conversation about the most trivial thing like traffic.

There’s something in the way she looks at him now that he’s plunged straight into her world. The stage lights put a new glimmer in her green eyes and it makes the rest of her come to life when she smiles.  

His hands shake as they get ready for the show, and she must sense the anxiety that’s spilling off of him because she takes one hand in between both of hers and squeezes tight. He looks over at her and the tightness in his chest loosens significantly. She doesn’t let go of his hand, either.

Our Town is apparently a classic, but Jeremy wouldn’t know shit about that. Instead, all he knows is that he’s reading the lines of a guy named George that Scarlett’s character is in love with and his father is being portrayed by none other than Mark Ruffalo. Scarlett’s seat is next to his during the duration of the reading, which Jeremy’s thankful for, because it means he can whisper to her while other people are reading to figure out what’s going on or just to make some joke about Chris not having page twelve, it means he can poke her with his pencil whenever she looks like she’s on another planet, it means he can hold her hand when one of his scenes is upcoming and the nerves kick back in.

Nervousness doesn’t equate misery. It’s the same kind of fun he imagines he would have had in high school drama class, had he actually taken that elective. When he gets to his scenes, he stands up with everybody else and they just play around with the lines, having their fun and ignoring the fact that there are people out there in the audience that paid a nice, shiny penny to see them essentially rehearse a play.

And, okay, it doesn’t hurt that he gets to unabashedly mess with Scarlett throughout the entire thing, _especially_ since their characters are supposedly in love.

They reach the wedding scene, which is where reality starts to get away from him. Someone asks him if he, George, takes Emily to be his wife, and he shoots Scarlett a wink before yelling out, “Hell yes!” It cracks her up and causes her to miss her line, which he expects is in the same vein. The same person then tells him that he’s allowed to kiss the bride.

They’re just supposed to be reading the play. That doesn’t stop Scarlett from popping up on her tiptoes and leaning in towards him and _oh god oh god wait a minute I didn’t sign up for this this was not supposed to happen this is actually happening—_

It’s a split-second decision that he’s not fully sure he’s comfortable with making, but he throws all remaining caution to the wind as he cups her face and brushes his lips against hers.

The entire world falls away from him except for her.

The kiss is short and sweet, ending no sooner than it started. She keeps him close and wrestles him into a hug and they stay like that for a moment, Jeremy terrified that she can hear how loud his heart is beating in his chest.

Forget the fucking play.

He’s gone and kissed the one person he’s told himself he would never cross that line with, and now?

Well, now he’s ready to take a sledgehammer to every last structure the two of them could possibly have erected between them to keep the other out because all he wants is her, all of her, exactly like this.

He cries when she cries later in the third act of the play. When they take their bows at the end, she’s glued to his side, clinging to his hand or his arm or his side and he can’t complain, not at all – not when she’s giving him exactly what he wants and what he’s wanted for _so_ fucking long that he’s done a hell of a job in telling himself that he doesn’t. His lips brush against her temple right before she leads him off-stage with the rest of the cast. She glances over her shoulder to make sure he’s right behind her, still holding his hand, and that strange look is back in her eyes.

He’s met with a bunch of people telling him that they had no idea he could act and that he was fantastic and that he should really consider dipping his toes into their world more often. Scarlett looks somewhat smug, like she’d known he would be great all along. It’s her approval that means the most, and he feels like he could burst into stardust or some shit when she hugs him and tells him that he was phenomenal.  

Afterwards, they all go out for a late dinner and drinks in celebration of a job well done and a nice hefty check to give to charity. Someone asks Scarlett what she wants to do next, now that she’s freshly divorced and has the entire world still offered to her in an oyster. Jeremy keeps his eyes trained on her as she shrugs. “Dunno,” she muses. “Maybe I’ll head back to New York for a little bit.”

In the spirit of insane ideas, an empty spot of land in Snedens Landing appears on Jeremy’s radar later in the week and he purchases it with dreams of grandeur clouding up his mind.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Kris thinks that Jeremy has lost his mind. He tells him this at least three times a day after learning what Jeremy’s gone and done.

“You kissed Scarlett one time in a play and you…what, bought her a house?”

Jeremy has perfected the look he gives Kris every time they launch into this conversation. “I didn’t buy her a house. I bought a piece of land that I’m considering building a house on.” His shoulders bend in a shrug. “A house that ideally, I’d like to live in.”

“With her.”

Jeremy extends his hand in Kris’s direction. “You said it, brother, not me.”

“You do realize how crazy that sounds, right?”

He’s fully aware of how crazy it sounds. There have been many nights where he’s stared at the ceiling, letting the other voice inside his head talk him down and tell him that he’s lost his head. That he let her post-divorce impetuousness rub off on him and he was doing things he couldn’t possibly follow through on because they simply weren’t within reach. That he’s exhibiting behavior of a psychopath or a serial killer and that it’s in his best interest to sell the property out in New York.

But there have been just as many nights where he thinks about the past several months since the play. His mind puts on a supercut of the memories, of her bringing Rose over even on days he didn’t have Ava just so they could have lunch together, the FaceTime calls at unholy hours while she filmed some movie in Australia, the late night conversations while sitting out on his patio with a bottle of wine and the moon over their heads, how he’s felt closer to her in the last few months than he has in his entire life and the happiness that floods through his veins is a high he desperately wants to keep chasing. It’s like for the first time in forever, he’s allowed to want her.

Jeremy knows that the slopes are slippery, and it’s why he is content to bide his time as long as he needs to. She’s expressed nearly a dozen times she isn’t interested in dating anybody at the moment, wanting to finish up the last couple of movies she’s gotten booked and figure out what the future holds for her. He can be patient, though, if that’s what she needs. He’s sat in the wings of her life for years now and that single moment of sharing the spotlight can tide him over a little while longer until she’s ready.

Besides, he needs for it to all go right. He wants her to close the book and be it.

Kris thinks he is batshit insane and acting like a teenage girl with a crush on a movie star, and maybe he is, but his heart feels like it’s shaken loose a few chains it didn’t even know it bore. She did a movie with Matt Damon a few years ago, where all the characters kept spouting off about twenty seconds of insane courage and he finds that looping in his head. He’s just waiting for the planets to all align in their rightful position before he takes it and jumps.

“I’m gonna make it work,” he promises Kris. “I’m tired of letting some other guy swoop in, I’m tired of pretending that I don’t feel something for her, I’m tired of dancing ‘round and ‘round. I want it to be over and I wanna start the rest of my life already.”

“With her,” Kris finishes for him, his voice monotone.

“I love her,” Jeremy says, like it’s one of the few truths he knows in life. “I’m in love with her. I’m not scared of that anymore.”

Kris raises an eyebrow. “So are you gonna tell her?”

Jeremy nods, taking a deep breath as he brings his scotch glass up to his mouth. “I’m gonna tell her.”

**❖ ❖ ❖**

If there is any lesson he should have learned in nearly thirty years of friendship with Scarlett, it is that each time they take one step forward, they will always take two steps back.

They go for dinner one night, no kids and a step above a t-shirt and jeans. He’s brought himself right towards the edge of the cliff and is ready to go over, prepared to tell her that he’s in love with her and deal with the aftermath however it comes to him.

Scarlett glows even in a dim light, the smile on her face wider than he’s ever seen it and the way one of the lights hits the crown of her slowly growing out blonde seems to give her a halo. She tells him that she’s got news she wants to share with him – boy, can he relate to that.

Jeremy lets her take the stage first and she tells him all about a non-profit organization she’s fallen in with. It’s politics-based, something that doesn’t surprise him at all – he wouldn’t be stunned if she wound up leading the great nation of America someday – and they work to patch the broken system, pass anti-corruption laws, start conversations. “I never wanted for acting to feel like a job,” she admits softly as she swirls her Pinot Grigio around in the glass. “And lately it’s started to feel that way, so now seemed like a good time to hit the brakes.”

“I’m happy for ‘ya, sweetheart,” he tells her, holding up his own glass for her to clink against her own. And he is. He couldn’t be more over the moon about it, really, because he still remembers the conversation that they had when she and Romain were having their issues. He remembers the faraway look she got in her eye when she started talking about home again, how if she ever took a break from acting, she’d want to settle down somewhere along the Hudson.  

And if it makes him feel a little self-satisfied knowing that he’s the person who can take her where she wants to go? Sue him. He’s allowed to bask in his victory. For once, he’s gotten his timing right and everything is coming together.

“Thanks,” she says, her smile so infectious that he can’t resist in mirroring it.

“’S that all your big news?” he tries to ask as nonchalantly as possible. _Because I’d really like to move onto mine, which is that I am in love with you_.

“Actually…” Her line of sight drifts down to the tablecloth as she chuckles. “No, not really. There’s something else, but I didn’t know if I was gonna tell you tonight.”

That’s got his interest. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about it?”

One of her shoulders inches up in a half-hearted shrug. “I dunno, really. ‘Cause I don’t know how you’ll react to it?”

“Well, how do you _want_ for me to react? Lately, I’ve been hearing that I am one hell of an actor.” He breaks up the last word into two exaggerated syllables which makes her laugh.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, hotshot.” He lifts one of his hands in innocence as he settles back into his chair. “I don’t know?” she says, her voice raising so high in octave that it cracks. “I want for you to be happy, I guess. I’m pretty happy about it.”

“As long as you’re happy, then so am I.” His heart is beating dangerously in his chest. He’s not the kind of man to get his hopes up on anything because it’s left him burned and disappointed before, but the way she’s talking…is this just another product of them operating on the same frequency? Is she about to say something that’s in the same spirit of what he’s dying to tell her?

She looks up at him, chewing on her lower lip as she gives one more moment of contemplation towards telling him whatever it is that she wants to get off her chest. “I’m seeing somebody.”

His ears are ringing.

“I met him two months ago when I went back to New York for SNL, we hit it off at the pitch meeting and from there it all kinda escalated? I mean, I wasn’t looking for anybody, you know that—” Jeremy nods stiffly. “—but he was just there and I couldn’t stay away from him and once we wrapped, well, things _really_ escalated from there. I didn’t think that we could make it work with us being on opposite coasts, but with Represent I’m gonna be back in New York City and it just…” She sighs contentedly. “It feels right this time, ‘ya know?”

Jeremy is sending smoke signals to every deity above his head (and below his feet) that could possibly be tuning in to this trainwreck, begging for the poker face of a lifetime. “Mm,” he hums disinterestedly as he reaches back for his wine glass.

Scarlett’s studying him, her eyes narrowed. “What?”

“What?”

“You seem…I don’t know,” she finishes. “Weird.”

Weird, he thinks, is the understatement of the goddamn century.

He’s officially operating on autopilot, letting his brain and his heart and the rest of him enter survival mode until he can get away from her and throw something at a wall. The drawer in which he keeps his confession welcomes it right back home with open arms; once he’s sure it’s closed tight, he opens his mouth to speak. “As long as you’re happy, then so am I.”

**❖ ❖ ❖**

The year slips by slowly.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Ava asks about her friend Rose. A small part of Jeremy wishes that she had been little enough when they met that he could write Rose off as an imaginary friend.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Roughly a year and a half after purchasing the land out in Snedens Landing, Jeremy decides to do something with it. Being tactile has always been good for him, always helped to clear his head. He wants to get a move on with his life, with or without her, and fate has drawn the card that says he’ll be without. He’s made his peace with it.

He makes plans to build on the land, but after there’s a house sitting there, he doesn’t have a clue on what he’ll do with it. It’s not his dream to live here and it never will be. He figures he’ll probably sell it once all is said and done.

That doesn’t stop him from making it his labor of love.

He drives his RV cross-country out so he’s got somewhere to stay while he works on clearing through the land, filing for extra permits on taking down a few trees and reworking house plans at ridiculously late hours. For him, this is as detached and unplugged from the surrounding world as he can possibly get, which is what he needs.

Kris doesn’t understand but he does, enough that he lets Jeremy go traipsing off to the other side of the country as long as he can handle the books while he’s neck deep in his little sabbatical. Sonni isn’t happy that she’s got to fly with Ava somewhere new and entirely out of the way, and she’s definitely not happy that this is where Ava’s spending her time during his weeks, but Jeremy honestly couldn’t give less of a fuck about what that woman thought of him.

Nicky and her daughter Paige still live in the city, so they take the half-hour drive some days to visit him.

“You happy doing this?” Nicky asks him as she opens up a snack sized back of popcorn.

His eyebrows knit together. “Do I not look it?”

Nicky’s head tilts to the side, her eyes spelling out _come on._ “I might have just been your annoying kid sister but I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about ‘ya in all my time.”

“If I remember correctly, I think you were the one who told me I had a promising future as a caveman. Something to do with my IQ.”

Nicky rolls her eyes. “This is not what I meant by that.”

He hugs the tiny little girl sitting on his leg a little closer to him, resting his chin on top of her head. “Yeah, well, sometimes life takes its turns.”

The frown on Nicky’s face deepens. “I’m sorry that she flew out of your hands again, big brother,” she says softly.

Jeremy shrugs like he’s indifferent towards the whole matter. “’S okay,” he mutters. “It happens.”

“We all thought you guys would be together by now. Hell, we thought that it would have happened long before now.” Nicky throws a piece of popcorn into her mouth. “You and Scarlett just seemed like you were made for each other. I saw how you guys were and wanted to find that for myself. Kinda bummed when I figured out that it was just you two that got to have that kind of connection.”

It’s Jeremy’s turn to frown. “You don’t deserve to have a love life that follows in my steps. You deserve a hell of a lot better than that.”

“Yeah, well. Sometimes life takes its turns.”

He supposes that’s true. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have a niece sitting in his lap drinking apple juice and occasionally stopping to look up at him and smile crookedly with all the love in the world in her eyes. He wouldn’t have a daughter of his own who is currently back in California in a kindergarten classroom. He might not have the girl but he’s got a life that he can’t complain about, a life that he’s grateful for even with all its fucked-up pieces and parts.

“Is she still with the comedian?” Nicky tries.

“I suppose,” he sighs shallowly. “I don’t talk to her much these days. You know how she is when she’s in love.”

“She tunes the rest of the world out.” Jeremy nods succinctly. “There once was a time where her being in love didn’t mean jack shit, though.”

“We’ve grown up too much for that to still be true,” he admits sadly.

“I’m just saying, if she’s done it before, maybe she’s got it in her to do it again.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who’s got the issue with that being a thing, Nic. I don’t think I can handle it.”

Nicky fishes for something else to say but turns up empty-handed, resorting in reaching across the table and wrapping her hand over his. “You know that you’re the bravest person I know?” she tells him after a second.

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“I’m living in an RV in the middle of nowhere while I build a house in order to escape my problems that are entirely my fault for existing. That’s not brave.” Nicky’s fingers curl tighter over his hand, and when he dares to let his eyes meet hers, he instantly can make out the glassiness in them.

“You loved somebody, you got your heart broken, and you kept going. _That’s_ brave, big brother.”

**❖ ❖ ❖**

**YOU HAVEN’T SEEN SCARLETT JOHANSSON ON THE SILVER SCREEN LATELY, AND THIS IS WHY**  
_By Aliza Stoks • New York Times Exclusive_  
One of Hollywood’s most notable names has taken their last bow for the foreseeable future, spending the last year on a different stage. Instead of ensnaring audiences with a costumed performance, Scarlett Johansson speaking to crowds and classrooms in a D.C.-approved blazer about things like political bribery, dark money, and anti-corruption laws. “The passion for politics has always been there,” says the actress, who has been both an audience member and speaker at past Democratic National Conventions. “I’ve always believed in being an active participant with staying educated and exercising my right to vote. But within the last two years, I’ve found myself wanting more and more to be as present and involved as I can. Our system has changed, it’s broken in lots of ways, and the only thing you can do if you want to see change is to do something.” Do something she has; Johansson has spent her acting sabbatical in New York City, working alongside Represent.Us in a multitude of ways. Whether it has been on a stage with co-founder of the organization with a  PowerPoint behind her while discussing how to combat corruption from state to national level, going in local high schools and starting conversations among students about the importance of voting, Johansson believes in the hands-on approach and hasn’t shied away from this new role she has stepped into.  
When asked why she chose to step away from acting to focus full-time on this latest endeavor, Johansson’s reply was simple. “I like the tone my life has now. I’ve been grateful for the success I’ve found [in acting] but I’m even more grateful that I can still go to work, do something I’m passionate about, and know I’m helping make a better world for my daughter to live in. It’s given me the opportunity to become somebody new.”  
_For more, see Entertainment page 12_

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Someone – he doesn’t know who, but once he figures it out, he’s going to damn them all the way to hell and back – has told Scarlett that he’s in New York, because she drops by the house one day unannounced.

The house is coming along all things considering. Most of the framing is done and the roofing is set to begin in the next day or so, which means he’ll be able to start doing siding within the week. It’s been the biggest challenge he’s ever taken on, especially since he doesn’t have Kris in his ear giving him suggestions or helping him pull any of the strings he normally does. It’s just Jeremy and all of his blood, sweat, and sanity. Tears have yet to be shed, but if the forecast for rain doesn’t change, he might find himself making an amendment on that. The house is his baby, though, his pride and joy, the cheapest therapy he could’ve ever paid for that actually does the trick.

The humidity is brutal, he’s spent the whole day chugging water only to still be thirsty, and when he sees a car coming down the driveway, he genuinely thinks that he is hallucinating.

But he’s not. As he approaches, it registers with him that the black Mercedes is very much real, and Scarlett is as alive as she’s ever been when she steps out of the car.

Each time they do this – fall apart and then come back together, that is – they both find themselves meeting a different version of themselves. Who she is now is somebody that he never could have foreseen. She looks like she belongs in a third-grade classroom, wearing a red top and a long floral skirt, blonde hair just barely brushing over her collarbone again. It’s the softest he has ever seen her, even if she is standing out in the middle of the brutal heat and is as good as a stranger.

She meets him in the middle, sunlight glowing around her. “Hey, stranger,” she calls out.

The first thing he can manage to say to her after nearly another two years of not speaking is, “How’d you know I was here?” It sounds a little harsher than he intended, so he tries to pair it with an obviously fabricated smile and hope for the best.

If she finds anything weird by his question, she doesn’t acknowledge it. “I’ve got my ways.”

She’s close enough for him to smell her perfume, the same old Dolce and Gabbana that she’s used for a decade now. He catches her moving in for the hug and tenses up, quickly taking a step back. That trips her up, her eyebrows knitting together in concern. “I’m filthy,” he reasons. “Don’t feel like getting your pretty outfit dirty.”

“When have I ever given a fuck? Hug me.”

He relents, but he barely brushes his hands across her back and doesn’t let her body touch his own in the middle. This puzzles her, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“So,” she says instead, one hand resting on her hip and the other shielding the sun from her eyes as she takes a good look at the house. “This your latest project?”

“Somethin’ like that,” he replies as he makes his way back over to where he’s got his work bench set up. She trails along behind him, the smell of her perfume carrying in the wind and alerting him of her presence on his heels.

“You and Kris?”

Jeremy shakes his head. “Nah. Just me this time around.”

Both of her eyebrows shoot up. “That’s impressive. You’re moving your way up in the world, aren’t ‘ya?”

“You know me. I like a challenge.”

“That I do.” She rolls all of her weight onto one of her legs as she stands across the bench from him somewhat awkwardly. “What’s your timetable looking like for this?”

He shrugs. “Don’t really have one. This was more of a personal investment.”

“Personal?” she repeats. “So you’re gonna move into it once it’s done?”

“Maybe,” he tries to hum nonchalantly, his best attempt to throw her off the scent that all his responses are clipped. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“Not to be one to peer pressure or anything, but I think you should,” Scarlett continues, in attempt to alleviate the awkwardness that is very quickly encircling them and threatening to suffocate. “Means I’d get to see you more. Rosie, too. She misses Ava. And I you. We haven’t talked in a while.” Her voice grows smaller with each uncomfortable addendum until she’s standing there like a little girl, hands folded behind her back and sights shifted towards the grass.

Jeremy reminds himself to bite his tongue. He didn’t wake up this morning with the intention of getting in a fight, and he’s not about to change course so quickly.

It is hard, though, when he knows exactly why they haven’t talked in a while. It’s the same reason as before, the same reason that it feels like there’s something in the air pressing down on both of their shoulders. It’s hard not to let the still-broken pieces of his heart that don’t have as tough of scar tissue built up poke into his temper and trigger an avalanche of words and reasons that would bury her.

There’s something glinting there on her wrist, and his eyebrows furrow slightly as he tries to get a better glimpse at it. She can read his mind, of course, so she catches on quickly and extends her arm out. “You like?” she asks quietly, somewhat rhetorical. “It’s a Cartier.”

He nods stiffly – he’s sure to someone who is remotely interested in jewelry, that would mean something. It must mean something to her, anyways. He struggles to bring himself to care. “Colin?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Yeah,” she replies, and her voice is like a feather floating through the air. Soft, delicate, somewhat timid as it falls on his ears. Like saying it to him is uncomfortable because she doesn’t know how it will settle.

It settles the same way every other man who buys her love and affection has for the last however many years he’s had a front row seat to this show: he grits his teeth as it makes the pass over his shoulders and lands somewhere that he will inevitably have to side-step later.       

“Going good?”

“It’s okay,” she responds carefully. “Two years in a few weeks.”  

He was six when he met her. He’s thirty-six now, and it is the first time in thirty years that they have fallen into an awkward silence, a true lack of things to say to each other. Jeremy knew they’d never be the same after her and Romain, but he never anticipated them to descend to this. _It is what it is,_ he thinks to himself. It’s the price he paid when he fell in love with her without any precaution: he sacrificed everything that they had even if it meant getting to this place. He’s paid it in full, too.

If there’s a thread still holding the two of them together, it is fraying and unraveling, but Scarlett is still clinging tightly to it like a lifeline. “Can you talk to me, please?” she asks, her voice quiet and the faint trace of irritation starting to push through.

He glances up from the work bench to meet her eyes. “What’s there to talk about?”

“I don’t—” She catches herself. She swallows and squares her shoulders, skirt ruffling in the newfound breeze. Now she’s starting to look familiar. “No,” she says, unstable but stern. “No, I _do_ know. How did we get here? Why does it feel like you’re shutting me out, like you don’t want me to be here?”

Those are dangerous, dangerous words, slowly pushing down on the red button inside his mind. It takes a painstaking amount of control to choose his next words carefully. “It’s not any of your business,” he states levelly.

“I’m sorry?”

Her green eyes are riddled with surprise, but his face remains the same. “It’s not any of your business,” Jeremy repeats exactly as he said it before. “What I do hasn’t been any of your business for years now, and it’s not fair to me to have to explain it all to you when you come back around with your hand outstretched like you’re entitled to it.”

It’s caught her completely off-guard, leaving her a fish plucked right out of the water with no warning. “You shouldn’t have come here,” Jeremy finds himself continuing, the mumble mostly him thinking aloud but her taking it and running with it like the wind.

“Why? Why shouldn’t I have shown up to see my best friend that I haven’t seen in years when I find out that he’s in town?”

“Because I can’t…” He swallows down the emotion and forces himself to get a handle on it before he opens his mouth again. “I can’t _look_ at you.”

“You can’t look at me?”

The nod he gives her is almost indiscernible. She does like she always does and takes, takes it and runs with it, takes all the oxygen surrounding him and takes it for herself as she walks around the work bench so she’s standing right beside him. Her hands find his face and cup his jaw, guiding his head up so he has no choice but to look at her. No choice but to feel his heart disintegrate in his chest and be put right back in her eyes where it always wanted to find a home.

He wishes she wouldn’t have done that. He wishes that she wasn’t so goddamn stubborn, so infuriating and hellbent on getting exactly what she wants without having a single fucking regard for him or how he feels. “There,” she says quietly as their eyes meet and she does her best to singlehandedly kickstart his heart again. “Problem solved.”

“Problem not solved,” he grinds out through gritted teeth.

Scarlett frowns, shaking her head slightly. “I don’t understand you.”

It’s a simple comment, really. Any other lifetime when she would have said it, it wouldn’t have so much as touched him. But she says it now, so light and airy and offhanded and so painfully Scarlett that it makes every last piece of him fall apart.

“You don’t understand me?” He rips her hands off of his face and takes a step back, bitter laugh rising in his throat like bile. “No, how could you? How could you understand me when you don’t know what it’s like to not get what you want? How could you understand me when I’ve given you every single fucking thing that you could ever possibly want from me?”

“Well what do you want from me?” she says, her voice beginning to raise as she jerks her hands towards the cavity of her chest. “I’m here, aren’t I? What do you want?”

“You!” he shouts. “All I have ever wanted is _you!”_

She stares at him, the confusion wild in her eyes. He’s too far gone to rein himself back in and he just lets the words fly carelessly off of his lips. “And I’ve done my best to give you the world and not ask for anything return, I really have. You wanted somebody to sneak you a cigarette? I gave it to you. You couldn’t sleep at two in the morning because some asshole at school was harassing you and you didn’t know what to do about it? Who was on the other end of those phone calls? You wanted someone to spend all your time with when you were busy avoiding your life? I was there. You wanted somebody to pick you up off the floor and put you back together? I did it. You wanted somebody to…to come be in your play? I was there. You wanted somebody to draw you a tattoo? I did it. You wanted to retire from acting and move back to New York and live somewhere on the Hudson?” He gestures wildly around them. “Ta-da!”

Scarlett’s face has gone entirely blank, an expression he’s never seen her wear before. “You think I did all of this shit for me? You think I decided to upend my perfectly fine life and build a house across the country for the hell of it? No, I did it because it was what you said you wanted, even though you didn’t want me – you wanted the…the guy who got you a fancy fuckin’ bracelet.”

Jeremy takes a deep breath after his tirade has escaped him. Every card but one has been tossed in the open; he’s already lost her, so upending the final one shouldn’t hurt. “I love you,” he says hoarsely. “And I’ve been in love with you for a long ass time, but I was okay with you not reciprocating it because I am used to not getting what I want.” His hands slap on his thighs as he lets them fall to his side in defeat.

Somewhere in the back of her throat, Scarlett seems to have finally located her voice. “Were…were you ever going to tell me?”

“Why would I? You said it yourself – you don’t understand me. Why the fuck would I waste my breath trying to explain it to you?”

Jeremy has never heard silence so thunderous before as it swallows them whole. There are tears burning in her eyes as she looks at him, everything that she thought she knew falling away in front of her just like it had for him at her and Ryan’s wedding. The taste of payback is bittersweet, and it’s so cloying on his tongue that it’s making him nauseous.

“Just go,” he tells her tiredly, because there’s nothing else that either of them can say that would make this any better. It would be treating a bullet hole with a Band-Aid. “Please. Just…just go.”

And she does.

**❖ ❖ ❖**

There’s the telltale sound of gravel being upturned in his driveway, which is universal language for someone’s barreling through to see him. Who, though, Jeremy has no earthly idea.

He wipes his forehead off on the bottom of his shirt as he walks around the back of the house and out towards the front yard. Kicking up dust is a black Mercedes. His stomach drops.

This again.

She’d done exactly as he’d asked yesterday and left, leaving him to sit in the grass for a while as he dissociated, mostly, before pulling himself to his feet and dragging himself into the RV. He got drunk, as to be expected, and then to really rub salt in his wounds, he pulled out the shoebox in the closet that held all of those stupid letters she wrote him when he was a freshman in college. He told himself that he was going to burn them, but he barely got the corner of the first one to turn brown before his hands started shaking too much and he accidentally burned himself.

He had said his peace, buried their friendship and held the funeral for it. At least the last image he had of her was of that, in red and blue floral looking like life had been treating her kinder than ever (up until he bled out all over her, of course).

It completely slipped his mind that she was always bloodthirsty when it came to getting the last word.

The car jerks to a stop a little over halfway down the winding gravel road, which means that she’s spotted him. _Shit_. He starts backtracking towards the back of the house, hoping that maybe he can get some time on her and make it inside the RV before she catches up.

“Hey!” she screams across the clearing. “ _Hey!”_

Jeremy steals a glance over his shoulder to see her stalking his way with white-hot determination burning under her feet. She must have come straight from work, because she’s wearing a blazer and a pair of silk dress pants, hair twisted up and steel in her eyes the minute they lock onto her target: him.

“Go home, Johansson,” he calls back.

“Hey!” she yells again, this time the sound of her voice much closer. He stops once he’s in the shade of the tree – the low afternoon sun is especially brutal today and he now understands why, what with the way she’s wielding hellfire his way – to see that she’s kicked off her shoes in the yard to help increase her speed in approaching him. “We aren’t finished.”

“Yes, we are,” Jeremy tells her stiffly. “We’ve been finished.”

“Says who?” Both hands root onto her hips when she stops a few feet away from him. “You?”

He glances around them before returning his sights right back to her. “Uh, yeah.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “No. _No._ I don’t accept that.”

“Well, you better get used to it. We’re done.”

“Done,” she repeats. “Done. You want to be done all because, what? You told me you loved me?”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growls, eyes going dark. He knows exactly how she dirty she plays, how vicious she can be without even trying. He doesn’t want to have this fight, and he especially doesn’t want to have it with them slinging nukes at each other. “Don’t start.”

She’s not listening to a single thing he’s saying. “You want to throw thirty years down the drain because you said some shit yesterday that you’ve obviously been dying to say for a long time now? We tell each other everything, Renner, the good, the bad and the ugly. We don’t keep secrets. We don’t _end our friendship_ because we say something the other person might not be interested in hearing.”

“What, like we did when you got married to Ryan? Or when I knocked up Sonni?”

“I _never_ held that against you,” she snarls. “You were too busy being pissed at me that I’d tried to learn from the Ryan thing, that I tried to tell you about my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, at my fuckin’ family’s Christmas that I had invited you to!”

“So? What was the goddamn difference? You knew about all my boyfriends! All of ‘em! I sat around while you whored yourself out all through high school and did I throw a hissy fit? Try to cut you off? No!”

“Do you even hear yourself right now?”

“Do you?”

“What? Telling you that I wasn’t the only one who kept secrets? That I didn’t try to fuck us over on purpose? That I would have rather you physically stabbed me than let me think for a second that you wanted me? That I would still rather have you stab me than live for a second with your pity because oh, poor Renner loves you and you didn’t love him back? Yeah, I hear myself, loud and clear. It’s you that’s not listening.”

“Not listening,” she laughs spitefully. “Not listening. You’re _blind_ , Renner.”

He's gone and pissed her off now. Her eyes are ablaze as she angrily rips her blazer off. “If you wanna tussle, sweetheart, the time for that’s passed,” he sneers, which only pisses her off further. She throws the blazer on the ground at her feet and starts hastily unbuttoning her blouse. He’s mad, but this? This is going to make him sick. “Stop. Stop it, goddammit.”

“No,” she fires at him venomously, her fingers tearing at her shirt so violently that a button pops off in her efforts. She rips it off her shoulders and crumples it in a ball, slamming it onto the ground with her blazer. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes as he turns away, not wanting to look at her like that. This is not what he imagined his Thursday afternoon to look like: standing outside under a tree, going at it with Scarlett who’s in her silk dress pants and bra, so angry that her neck is splotchy. When she speaks again, she’s yelling. “Look at me!”

“Scarlett, I am not—”

_“Look at me!”_

He opens his eyes to see that she’s turned around – thank  _god_  – and has her back to him. For a moment, it doesn’t make any sense, why she’s standing there with her trembling hands planted on her hips and her back exposed to him. It’s just her back, adorned with a lamb tattoo and a long vine of roses and—oh.

Oh.

He recognizes the second rose from the top first because he still remembers how badly he’d fucked up the middle when he drew it. And then all the other roses that he’d drawn on that piece of paper so she’d have options when she went, they are all on her body, twisting down from her shoulder blade and curling over her spine. He can’t see where they end, cut off abruptly by the waistband of her pants. “Scarlett.” His voice doesn’t sound like his own, so soft that the sound barely reaches his ears.

“I got this done the day after Our Town. I got this almost two and a half years ago because I got the man I loved to  _finally_  kiss me and I knew he’d never do it again, and the only way I knew how to deal with the…the pain of that was to have someone needle it out of me for ten hours.”

She spins around and her green eyes are glassy. “You are blind,” she tells him, her voice small. “You didn’t see it when we were kids. You didn’t see it when I wrote you all those letters when you went out to Modesto. You didn’t see it when you came back for my graduation. You didn’t see it when I spent that whole week in a house without electricity and running water with you. You certainly didn’t see it when you were throwing up with food poisoning at three in the morning. You didn’t see it when I asked you to be in Our Town, or…or on the FaceTime calls, or at dinner, or when I bought you tickets to your favorite band for your birthday, or came to Christmas in Modesto, or showed up on your doorstep in the rain when I found out about you and Sonni, or when you were hooking up with other girls and I was trying to make myself be happy with some other guy. And yeah, maybe a lot of it was my fault, but you never _saw_ me _._ ”

It’s his turn to feel the earth’s rotation beneath his feet. "You never saw me," she whimpers. "And you still don't see me. Not the way I needed you to."

“Please don't tell me this just because you think it’s what I want to hear,” he warns her with the last ounce of his voice that he has left.

The first tear slips down her face as she laughs brokenly at him. “This is not about you, Renner.”

Scarlett steps forward, her trembling hands coming to rest under his jaw just like they had yesterday. “And I’m sorry,” she whispers, the shards making her voice snag. “I’m sorry that I’m selfish. I’m sorry that I’ve never given you what you wanted. I’m _sorry_ that I hurt you. That was the last thing I ever wanted. I was just in love and needed for the boy I loved to show me some attention; maybe that makes me the worst person ever, I don’t fucking know. If it does, then I’m sorry, Jeremy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Looking her in the eyes feels impossible, because he’s scared that she’s just saying things to appease him so she can keep him in her life. “Scarlett—”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, the tears spilling down her face. “I love you.”

He can only clutch onto her elbows as she begins to kiss the entire area of his face, whispering the same two things every time her lips brush away from his face. She is methodical as she maps him out with her mouth, her tears falling on his face as she mumbles her prayer over and over and over again. He keeps his eyes closed because this, this has to be a dream. That's the only time this ever happens, the only time he can indulge in it.

“Colin—”

Jeremy barely gets the name of her boyfriend off his tongue before she captures his lips with her own, clinging to him for dear life as she breathes him into her lungs. It’s not like their kiss on stage all those years ago; it’s heady and raw, it’s like unwinding time by hand and letting every memory soak back into his skin, it’s _them_ and it’s too good for this to be a dream but he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop and shake him wide awake.

“He’s gone,” she whispers when she physically has to come up for air. He sees the fear in her eyes when he dares to open his own and look at her. She suddenly looks like the little girl that was four years old and couldn’t find anyone who met her criteria of friendship, who didn’t want to be alone when everyone else had somebody, who saw him without anybody and decided that they were meant to be together even if he rejected her. She _still_ thinks he's going to reject her, like maybe that's what she deserves. Maybe part of her does. But when he fell in love with her, he didn't just cherry-pick the parts. It was all of her or nothing, because that was what he wanted: all of her. “I don’t want him, not if I can have you.”

His arms snake around her and draw her in so close that he doesn’t know where he ends and she starts. “You’ve always had me.”

“But what about now? What do _you_ want?”

“You have me.” She has him when he kisses her again, and again, and again. She has him when her legs lock around his waist and he carries her blindly to the RV. She has him when she lets him trail his lips down every inch of her rose tattoo on her back. She has him as he takes off the rest of her clothes and she tears off all of his. She has him the moment they collide and her eyes are so blown that it’s like someone’s opened the entire universe there in her irises. She has him as she whispers how much she loves him, letting him tell her every single way and minute that he’s loved her and how he's going to love her forever.

She’s always had him, and now he finally has her.  

**❖ ❖ ❖**

Inside a tiny white box adorned with a red ribbon is a key. Jeremy presents the box to Scarlett on the same morning she shows up, blonde hair in a bun and no makeup with boxes piled high in her car and ready to move into their house.

The key is engraved. It reads _you are my home._


End file.
